Little Women

Little Women (2019) is Greta Gerwig's period drama, free to watch online on iFILM. The four March sisters grow up in Massachusetts while their father serves as a chaplain far from home, during the years the country tore itself apart over slavery.

Jo (Saoirse Ronan) wants to earn her living with a pen, not a wedding ring. Around her: stage-struck eldest Meg (Emma Watson), frail and gentle Beth (Eliza Scanlen) at the piano, and sharp youngest Amy (Florence Pugh), determined to claim her own place. Gerwig reshuffles the timeline, cutting between a crowded childhood and the harder adult years when each sister settles her account with love, money and ambition. Timothee Chalamet plays the boy next door, Laurie; Laura Dern is their mother, Marmee; Meryl Streep plays the tart-tongued Aunt March.

The film draws on Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel, filmed many times before, but Gerwig folds the author into the story itself, with Jo haggling over the ending and the rights to her own book. It won the Oscar for Jacqueline Durran's costumes and landed six nominations. Stream Little Women (2019) online on iFILM.