Potter forms a tight friendship with Warne's unmarried sister, Millie (Emily Watson, emitting mischievous sparks), and their sisterhood — they agree that there's more to a woman's life than marriage and children — gives the story its feminist credentials.
Once Potter achieves financial independence, the movie dawdles on pleasantly as she buys Hill Top, a farm in the Lake District, in 1905, and goes on to become a major landowner in the region in a campaign to preserve the area from developers; again, conflicts are minimized.
She later finds romance with a lawyer, William Heelis (Lloyd Owen), whom she would marry in 1913. Potter, who died in 1943, lived way beyond the time frame of the movie. At her death, she left 14 farms and 1,600 hectares of land to the National Trust, along with her flocks of Herdwick sheep.
This much sweetness and light in a movie is all very well. But there's a reason that recipes for cake and cookies call for a pinch of salt. In Miss Potter, there is only a grain or two — not enough to dilute the sugary overload. The film is the cinematic equivalent of a delicate English tea cake whose substance is buried under too many layers of icing.
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