Fanny Price (Frances O' Connor) is ten years old when she is shipped from her rat-infested, hard-luck Portsmouth home to live with her wealthy relatives The Bertrams in Mansfield Park. There, she is raised by Sir Thomas Bertram (Harold Pinter) and Lady Bertram (Lindsay Duncan) as the family's "poor relation", seen as inferior to her aristocratic, and eminently marriageable, cousins Tom (James Purefoy), Edmund (Jonny Lee Miller), Maria (Victoria Hamilton) and Julia (Justine Waddell). Fanny is reminded daily that the other family members have every advantage over her, and that she should be grateful for whatever tidbits come her way. The only flickers of kindness amidst this prejudice emerge from Edmund, who shares Fanny's passion for dreams and storytelling, as well as her uncommon sensitivity.

When Fanny arrives at Manfield Park, she pours her pent-up feelings and fierce intelligence into secret letters, journals and other writings that are drawn directly from Jane Austen's teenage writing, sharing them only with Edmund. Like Austen - who wrote her first book at the age of 14, a clever and farcical history of England - Fanny is addicted to free self-expression in Rozema's MANFIELD PARK and becomes a writer.

The grown up Fanny is alluring, vital and with a tongue as sharp as a guillotine. This is the Fanny who greets Henry Crawford (Alessandro Nivola) and Mary Crawford (Embeth Davidtz), a modern-thinking, dangerously charming brother and sister pair from London who set off sparks at Manfield Park. Edmund, still the light of Fanny's life, is smitten with Mary, while Henry, who is desired by, and flirts with, almost every woman at Manfield Park, begins to woo the ever more challenging Fanny. Yet even as the party goes on, there are dark intimations that Manfield Park is falling into disarray, its slave-trade wealth threatened by a new moral atmosphere.

As fanny becomes the must-have object of Henry Crawford's affections, her status is radically uplifted. Suddenly, society takes notice of her and she learns to use her influence. But when Henry Crawford proposes to Fanny, she must take a decision. Her actions throw Manfield Park into a tailspin of adultery, betrayal and truth-telling, from which will emerge, among other things, a deliciously reluctant romance that slowly simmers to a union of true love.

Directed by Patricia Rozema. Casts include Frances O'Connor, Jonny Lee Miller and Alessandro Nivola.