Saoirse Ronan & Timothée Chalamet Are Here To Emotionally Wreck You In Greta Gerwig's Little Women Trailer
Gather your hooped skirts and too-small silk slippers because the first trailer for Little Women is finally here, and you'll want to look your very best, even (especially!) if it means you get blisters and have to leave the ball in Laurie's carriage.
This isn't so much a movie as it is an event. Directed by Greta Gerwig, and starring Emma Watson (Meg March), Saoirse Ronan (Jo March), Eliza Scanlen (Beth March), Florence Pugh (Amy March), Timothée Chalamet (Theodore "Laurie" Laurence), Laura Dern (Marmie March), and Meryl Streep (Aunt March), it's basically casting fanfiction come to life. In other words, expectations are high, and thankfully, the trailer doesn't disappoint.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Jo and Laurie dancing in the hallway by candlelight! Scorched hair! Amy declaring that she will be the most famous painter ever to live! Aunt March being absolutely horrible! It's all happening!
For those unfamiliar with the book, Little Women tracks the coming-of-age tale of the March sisters, living in reduced circumstances with their kind and caring mother, Marmee, while their father fights in the Civil War. The oldest, Meg, dreams of love and the luxuries only she can remember from when the family had money; Jo, the tomboy, spends her nights writing stories and plays for her sisters to perform, and her days frolicking with the boy next door, Laurie; Beth, the quiet, kind musical genius, is the connecting thread that binds the sisters together; and deliciously catty (and perpetually misunderstood) Amy, the youngest, is the one everybody loves to hate.
Gerwig's is far from the first on-screen adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic 1898 novel. In fact, the film's Christmas release will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the celebrated 1994 film adaptation, which starred Winona Ryder as Jo, and Christian Bale as Laurie. Last May, breakout stars Maya Hawke and Kathryn Newton played Jo and Amy March in a critically acclaimed PBS mini-series.
Still, you can bet that this version of Little Women won't be quite like the ones that preceded it. In a June Vanity Fair spread, Gerwig teased how she found new ways to enhance aspects of the text that she found particularly meaningful. "Jo is a girl with a boy’s name, Laurie is a boy with a girl’s name,” she said. “In some ways they are each other’s twins.”
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
In order to represent that idea visually, the director apparently had costume director Jacqueline Durran swap out some items of Ronan and Chalamet's costumes throughout the movie.
You can spot some of those details in trailer's glimpse at the pivotal scene where Laurie declares his love for Jo, a moment that is specifically designed to emotionally wreck me, right down to Chalamet's artfully disheveled curls.
December literally cannot come soon enough. In the words of Alcott herself: "I could never love anyone as I love my sisters."
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT