Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s take on Thomas Hardy’s earthy tale of an independent woman torn between three suitors and a dream of self-determination is both self-consciously modern and oddly old-fashioned. Carey Mulligan is Bathsheba Everdene, unexpected inheritor of her uncle’s farm, which is sorely in need of a firm hand. Proving herself more than a match for any man, Bathsheba swithers between the proposals of solid Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) and wealthy William Boldwood (an excellently uneasy Michael Sheen) only to fall for rakish Sergeant Troy (Tom Sturridge) and his sexy sword-waving skills – a scene rendered with less gropey lust but more breathlessly passionate weirdness in John Schlesinger’s recently reissued 1967 adaptation.