As You Like It

Kenneth Branagh directed and wrote this adaptation of William Shakespeare's comedy, which moves the story to nineteenth-century Japan. Rosalind, daughter of a duke forced from power by his younger brother, grows up at court alongside her cousin Celia, the usurping duke's daughter. She falls for a young man named Orlando, and her uncle soon banishes her as well. Rosalind flees with Celia and the court fool, disguising herself as a man in the Forest of Arden, where Orlando eventually arrives and Rosalind decides to test his feelings, setting off a series of mistaken identities and romantic confusion. The play's French setting is recast here, while the political rivalry, exile and forest encounters remain.

The film came out in September 2006, running 127 minutes, and was made and produced by Branagh with Judy Hofflund and Simon Moseley for BBC Film, HBO Films and the Shakespeare Film Company. It is the eighth of the eighteen features he has directed in chronological order, following Hamlet and preceding Sleuth. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Rosalind, Romola Garai is Celia, and Kevin Kline appears as Jaques, with Adrian Lester, Janet McTeer and Alfred Molina among a credited cast of twenty-four, backed by a crew of eighty-six. On IMDb the film holds a critics' rating of 4.7 out of 10 from fourteen reviews, while on TMDB it has a rating of 5.8 out of 10 from 102 votes.