A Frontmezzjunkies Film Review: “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life“
By Ross
On a quiet night in Toronto, this theatre junkie decided to take in a film before a week of theatre during the famed Stratford Festival‘s opening week. And it just felt like the obvious and correct choice to see the sweet, romantic comedy film, “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” directed with charm and care by the French filmmaker, Laura Piani (2022’s “Prudence Ledoux a le vent en poupe“). I had just recently seen, at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario, the hilariously well-crafted Pride and Prejudice, written most brilliantly by the seriously smart playwright, Kate Hamill, based on Austen’s classic, “Pride and Prejudice“, the 1813 “novel of manners.” And later this summer at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, I’ll be seeing, once again, Hamill’s adaptation of Austen’s Sense & Sensibility, which I had just recently re-engaged with when I watched the film version of “Sense & Sensibility“, on a rainy evening so beautifully written by its star, Emma Thompson, so if there was ever a time that I was primed for this theme, it was now.
Setting up unrealistic expectations for herself in love, the lead character, Agathe, an aspiring writer, believes, at least in regards to romance and soulmates, that she has been born in the wrong century, and maybe the wrong area code. She works, quite thematically and naturally, in a ‘Shakespeare and Company’ bookstore in Paris that seems to focus on English books and classics to a mostly English-speaking clientele. It’s touching and reminiscent of so many other romantic comedies, taking me back to the whimsical Julia Roberts/Hugh Grant film, “Notting Hill,” that also finds our romantic hero working diligently in a bookstore, and also naturally, being a male in this world (and Austen’s), it’s his own (not to point out the obvious). Grant’s character, like Agathe, isn’t exactly looking for love, especially when a movie star (that is played by a movie star) walks into his shop and says that immortal line about being just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her. And neither is Agathe, most fascinatingly portrayed by Camille Rutherford (“Anatomy of a Fall“), who really doesn’t believe she is made for love in the modern world, that is until a surprise kiss knocks her over from a good friend (Pablo Pauly) who is taking her to a writing retreat he has nudged her into going to.
But we know almost from that moment that he is not the one. But it has sparked something inside Agathe that wasn’t there before, and if we know anything about Austen, we sit back waiting for the handsome stranger who, at first, annoys our heroine, before the two fall inescapably in love. It’s just gotta happen that way, or where would we be in this romantic tale of love and romance? And we don’t have to wait too long before that handsome gentleman shows up, standing there looking as dashing as can be, waiting to pick Agathe up from the ferry. This is Oliver, and he’s there to whisk her away in his sexy little vintage two-seater sports car to the Jane Austen writing retreat, his familial home that is now a retreat for writers run by his loving, but faltering parents. He’s the great-great-great-grandnephew (I think, I’m unclear exactly how many ‘greats’ I need to put here, so forgive me if there are one too many or too few), but he doesn’t seem to be as interested in the romantic form like Agathe.
And almost on cue, the two don’t really hit it off, almost from the first moment of nausea experienced, literally, by Agathe from the moment she sees him and his little sexy car. Agathe, you see, has an intense anxiety around cars, caused by an early childhood trauma, but seemingly much more violently the moment she lays eyes on the dashingly handsome Oliver, played absolutely Austenianly by the charming Charlie Anson (“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies“). We know exactly where this is heading, especially when she complains about his proud manner in French on the phone when the car breaks down in the middle of lovely nowhere, not realizing that he speaks perfect French, until it’s much too late to take it all back. It’s quite the charming, ‘I hate you, but let’s sleep in the car overnight’ kind of moment, which is as old-fashioned as it’s refreshing and sweetly comedic. At least in the film adaptation of Austen world.
Agathe, who self-identifies with Anne Elliot in “Persuasion”, is blocked, romantically, but also from writing the ending of her love story that began with the hypnotic visualization at the bottom of a sake cup. “What happens next?” is the question of the moment, asked by the two men in her life about the novel that got her, in a sideways kind of manner, into the writing retreat, but also in the cinematic rom-comie way. How is this all going to play out for the women who dreams of the kind of love that only Austen can manufacture while romantically riding her visually perfect bicycle around Paris and the English countryside (which, as it turns out, isn’t in reality the English countryside as the film was entirely shot in France).
This Sony Pictures Classics is exactly what I needed from the world on that Sunday night in Toronto. The film lovingly delivers a kind of throwback feeling that also, somehow, still holds true to our way of interacting today in modern society. It’s lighthearted, while also nodding to modern conventions of dating, sex, and romance, giving us characters that literally fumble into each other’s space naked and vulnerable, through wrong doors, period costume balls, and vintage cars stalling on lovely country roads. Both Anson’s Oliver and Rutherford’s Agathe generate exactly what is required of them, most perfectly, according to Austen’s standards, witty in their instant distaste and obvious in their growing affection for one another, based on a few obvious and blatant observations of each other’s gentle spirit and kind demeanor.
Rutherford isn’t exactly the Hollywood ideal for such a film, nor is she the obvious French ingénue either, but she carries with her an authenticity that registers while also delivering to us a smart, somewhat awkwardly sexy heroine who looks lovely in her period costume and perfectly engaging stumbling through the forest being spat on by some feisty farmland costars. It’s her personality that truly registers. This is thanks to Rutherford’s ability to perform physical comedy and containment all at the same time. And to Piani for giving this character a platform to be more than just your typical Austen woman, although the film does purposefully remind us that Austen elevated her females to a higher level than any other writer of that same period, and her novels should in no way be minimized for their depictions. And that statement fit itself into the narrative as exacting as one of Austen’s well-crafted lines.
Piani doles out a narrative that both elevates the romantic notions while also not falling prey to the stereotypical. There is no wedding at the end of “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.” Just the moving aside of one to reveal the face we were waiting for in the crowd to appear, as the entry into Agathe’s writing career finds its imperfect place to take root and grow. The film ends with a pretty perfect reading of a poem by a true American documentarian, filmmaker, and theater director (and I guess Paris resident), the legendary Frederick Wiseman, making a cameo appearance by Agathe’s side in her Shakespearian bookstore. Wiseman has said that “all aspects of documentary filmmaking involve choice and are therefore manipulative. But the ethical … aspect of it is that you have to … try to make [a film that] is true to the spirit of your sense of what was going on.” Piani has succeeded quite beautifully in that task of showcasing our heady romantic notions that have infiltrated our society based on the classic and much-loved Austen worldview, while also holding true to our modern attachment to love and desire, particularly in the French and Parisian landscape. On a pedal bike. And in a quaint bookstore, where a woman can still dream and recommend Austen novels to young women looking for escape.
Sony Pictures Classics plans a limited release on May 23 for “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life“, going wide a week later.
