Camille Rutherford plays Austen-esque heroine Agathe in Laura Piani’s debut feature, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Written and directed by Laura Piani
Starring Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly and Liz Crowther
Classification PG; 98 minutes
Opens in theatres May 23
For the duration of my English degree, professors spoke of Jane Austen with a kind of careful reverence. It was understood that the Regency-era novelist – known for her sweeping romances about social conduct and odd, independent women – taught us ways of writing rather than ways of living, lest we drive ourselves lovesick in the process.
Agathe (Camille Rutherford), the lead of Laura Piani’s charming debut feature Jane Austen Wrecked My Life – which held its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2024 – has been spoiled by such literature, believing herself to be living in the wrong century and totally allergic to the digital frills of modern dating.
This Austen-esque heroine – unmarried, clever, ambitious but stagnant – is a clerk at the beloved Shakespeare and Company in Paris, as well as an unpublished writer with low morale. (Piani called Shakespeare and Co. “the first piece in the puzzle” in writing the script after working night shifts there years ago.)
Every day, starry-eyed Agathe paws at stories of romance and desire before going home to her sister and nephew, occasionally breaking up the time flirting with her best friend Felix (Pablo Pauly). Agathe’s creative-writing tutor accuses her of churning out “cheap romances,” though she just seems wired this way. She even admits to a habit of starting stories she cannot finish – a foible that reflects her lack of self-assurance.
While dining solo at her local Chinese restaurant, she precipitously produces four chapters of a romance novel after imagining a shirtless man emerging from her sake cup and embracing her. When Felix covertly (and successfully) submits these pages to the Jane Austen residency in the English countryside – an almost too-convenient initiative – Agathe is flung into a picturesque manor for two weeks of (non-) intensive writing, alongside stuffy academics and overwrought poets.
In this setting, the combined production design by Agnès Sery and cinematography by Pierre Mazoyer yields elegantly lived-in results; Piani even stated she was drawn to the “broken stairs and peeling wallpaper” for their sincere, rather than luxurious, quality.
One might be reminded of the 2013 rom-com Austenland, where a Pride and Prejudice-obsessed woman visits an Austen-inspired resort, though Piani’s film does not mock or chastise Agathe’s peculiarities and instead indulges her real-life fantasies.
In the film, Agathe is caught in a love triangle with her best friend, Felix, played by Pablo Pauly.Sony Pictures Classics
Still, Piani’s film toys with a number of congenial tropes: sitting in the fridge door at 2 a.m. with a mouthful of cold pasta, accidentally flashing your attractive new frenemy, gossiping in a language you assume others cannot understand, but, of course, do (the film is enjoyably multilingual). These details, though formulaic, feel like an extension of Agathe’s conscience, which has been forcibly moulded by the literature she surrounds herself with.
In getting to the British residency (in fact filmed in France), Agathe travels by boat and car, two modes of transportation that prove difficult as she is traumatized by a past accident where her father had a stroke while driving – so much so that she vomits all over the driver’s shoes. This chauffeur, briefly filling in for his parents, is Oliver Lowe (Charlie Anson), a descendant of Austen and a professor of contemporary literature at King’s College, who pointedly finds his great-great-great-great aunt’s literature overrated.
Agathe instantly detests Oliver’s haughtiness, but slowly warms to his cool exterior, caught in a sudden love triangle with him and Felix, the latter of whom has been “breadcrumbing” her with hastily-planted kisses and steamy texts. She searches – as any good Austen character might – for signs pointing one way or another, but comes up dry, instead forced to prioritize her writing ahead of the compulsory public reading of her work in progress.
Oliver, played by Charlie Anson, is a descendant of Jane Austen and a professor of contemporary literature at King’s College and becomes part of the love triangle with Agathe.Sony Pictures Classics
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life advocates for the escapist qualities of chick lit and chick flicks, though without fully uncovering the feelings of its central character. Agathe’s background is often flattened to suit the story of compulsive romance – of realizing one’s potential through the eyes of men. In one scene, Agathe informs the other writers that she is disinclined from the political imperatives of literature, finding herself drawn to the personal effects of an author’s work, as though the two are mutually exclusive.
The film is nevertheless pleasing and chock-full of little surprises – a tremendous cameo from American documentarian Frederick Wiseman as a poet, for instance – that underpin the sensation of a literary adaptation. Lamenting the loss of the arthouse rom-com often feels like pleading for dessert. Thankfully, Piani’s debut is sweet enough to nurse the craving.
