SOURCE: Marriette, Amelia. “Urban Dystopias: Reapproaching Christine Edzard's As You Like It.” In Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle, edited by Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray, pp. 73-88. London: Macmillan, 2000.

In the following essay, Marriette appraises Christine Edzard's 1992 anti-utopian, anti-pastoral, urban, and contemporary film adaptation of As You Like It, admiring its provocative interpretation of Shakespeare's text and its artistic integrity.

When Christine Edzard released her film version of As You Like It in October 1992, the pressure to be successful at the box office was not an overridingly important concern. The director's independent working conditions, her tight budget (£800,000), limited filming period (only five weeks) and art-house distribution suggested that her film would be artisanal in nature.¹ Refusing to sit easily alongside other major Shakespearean cinematic productions, Edzard's As You Like It, in fact, reveals greater affinities with the avant-garde genre, a ‘personal mode … made by individuals or...