Washington Square is a 1997 American romantic drama film directed by Agnieszka Holland, and starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney, Ben Chaplin, Maggie Smith and Judith Ivey.

Catherine becomes a plain young woman who is painfully shy and inept in the social graces expected of someone of her class, despite her aunt's best efforts to instill them.

At a party celebrating her cousin Marian Almond's engagement, Catherine is introduced to a handsome, charming young man named Morris Townsend.

Sloper misunderstands her and alters his will, adding a codicil deploring his daughter's ongoing interest in unscrupulous young men and leaving most of his $300,000 fortune to charity.

[3] In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "bracing and perfectly cast" and Jennifer Jason Leigh "unstintingly gutsy".

She added, "Ms. Holland gives this story compelling intimacy and a brusque, energetic pace...Maggie Smith steals many a scene.

"[5] In Variety, Todd McCarthy wrote "Washington Square emerges with only a portion of its force and complexity intact in this new screen version.

Quite faithful to the novel but imbued with something of a feminist twist, Agnieszka Holland's handsome picture captures the ambiguity of this 19th-century tale about a plain young woman's deception by a seductive fortune hunter, but misses the full measure of its acute psychological precision and bitter irony...Also problematic is Holland's cinematic approach, which in its less-than-graceful camera scheme and often arbitrary interaction of shots represents nothing close to the visual correlative of James' cool, refined, utterly precise literary style.

"[6] Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle described the film as "meticulous," Jennifer Jason Leigh as "very good," and Albert Finney as "specific and effective."

Of Maggie Smith, he said, she "indulges in blatant scene-stealing as Catherine's fussbudget Aunt Lavinia, but the merriment with which she commits her crimes makes it easy to forgive her."

He added "Even with its merits, Washington Square runs too long and ends with an ambiguous look from Leigh that feels like a bit of tagged-on feminism by Holland...Moreover, coming as it does on the heels of so many chaste Merchant-Ivory costumers and all the other well-appointed adaptations of Jane Austen, Edith Wharton and E.M. Forster, (it) suffers, inevitably, from arriving late at an already overcrowded gathering.