Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Laura Piani
Starring: Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson, Annabelle Lengronne
As a proper little book worm it always amuses me how the act of reading is
represented in mainstream culture. The popular portrayal positions the act
as beatific, serene; almost noble in its interaction of great ideas and
the imagination. You picture the reader subsumed in thick leather
armchairs (maybe in a "study"), scenic rain pattering the window, the
curling steam of a mug etc etc. Not as it really occurs: a man in his
pyjama bottoms, woefully hungover, stinking as he grips the latest Stephen
King, a book he drunkenly fell asleep reading seven hours prior (ie, me 10
minutes ago, with 'Never Flinch'. It's quite good so far, hopefully
continuing the return to form of last year's incredible 'You Like it
Darker'). There is an element of the illicit involved with reading, a
sybaritic pursuit (a notion explicated profoundly in Sara Gran's erotic
masterpiece 'The Book of the Most Precious Substance': a must read) which
defies the studious cosy of the stereotype. I do use a kindle too, but
nothing beats the physical relationship one has with a book, so intimate
as it travels with you, sleeps next to you, bears your marks and stains
and scent after holding it in your hands for all those lost hours together
- mmmm.
Or maybe it's the books I choose to read which entail such sordid process.
I mean, perhaps Jane Austen, with her sharp comedies of manners and mores,
is more befitting of genteel activity. Relocating the proto romantic
comedy of Shakespeare, with its hyperbole and exotic milieus, to the
social-realism of Regency England country estates with their incumbent
sitting rooms, grand balls and dining rooms loaded with implication and
innuendo (sex is existent in Austen, but always as an off page catalyst to
the narrative's human absurdity), Austen invented the modern RomCom. These
are books which are predicated upon social misunderstandings, perceived
status, and true love won at the expense of human conflict. And in a
similar dynamic to how hyperreal pornography belies the true hard work,
mess and responsibilities of sex, one wonders how far our idea of romance
and love has been shaped by the seeds sown by a woman in her mid-thirties
in the early nineteenth century. Has, as implied by the title of
Laura Piani's likeable debut feature, Jane Austen wrecked our
lives?
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life introduces us to Agathe (Camille Rutherford
- highly watchable), who works in the ideal bookshop -dog eared, cheerful,
labyrinthine - in which she dances around in a striped top while listening
to a twee cover of Solomon Burke's 'Don't You Feel Like Crying'. There is
a space in the shop for punters to leave little post-it notes which
expound their secret desires: "I've been reading Tolstoy to impress you, I
hope you'll notice me one day"... "Your white skin, your mouth, your shoes
have captivated me". Mate, are you alright? (then again, stalker behaviour
- obsession, coercion, the dark side of love - has always guilelessly
motivated the RomCom). Agathe cycles everywhere due to childhood trauma
and lives with her sister and cute nephew (more striped tops): it is very
whimsical. She has a male best friend who she enjoys a rough and tumble
relationship with. He's all for casual sex with various partners while
she's all about the real thing. The presentation of Félix (Pablo Pauly) is so full on a carefree enantiodromia that I thought he was a
reductive gay best friend stereotype and was all ready to visit the stable
where I keep my high horse, but no, he's a good old fashioned heterosexual
love rat. It's an interesting choice but ultimately an early indicator of
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life's at times blunt characterisation.
The bourgeois fantasia of Agathe's existence is swapped for another
aspirant location when she wins a scholarship to the Jane Austen
Residency, a two-week writing retreat held in England (Félix secretly sent
off her work to the competition, the little stinker). Agathe has a meet
cute with one of the organisers of the course, Oliver (played by veteran
of Austen-adjacent productions,
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' Charlie Anson). Oliver channels imperial era Hugh Grant with his
ums and ahs and good golly raised eyebrows, and when his car (vintage,
natch) breaks down en route to the retreat it is revealed that he is
distantly related to Austen but doesn't like her work, comparing it to
Dickens or Shakespeare in the way you might compare a turnip to a lemon,
and setting up a bit of interpersonal conflict to boot (for a film based
on literature the references are fairly dumbed down I must say, although I
suppose the title isn't Ottessa Moshfegh Wrecked My Life). Of course, the
male characters duly fall into the Darcy/Wickham binary opposition, and it
is fair game. What I didn't warm to was how much of a klutz Agathe is
throughout, falling over and the like in the name of, I presume,
relatability. Ungainliness as character trait is a lazy archetypal trope
of the genre popularised by Bridget Jones and which continues to
proliferate in those Laurie Gilmore books (yes, I read everything) but
which bears no relation to actual existence: in real life I have never
ever seen a woman fall over.
The conceit does give way to a strikingly continental moment when Agathe,
gambolling around her room naked (and yes girls, you see it all) in that
supposedly adorable French manner, accidentally stumbles into Oliver's
room and gives him a proper eyeful. No one in their right mind could
complain about the spectacle, but the bite this scene offers is
uncharacteristic (if welcome) to the otherwise refined and methodical
proceedings. In another funny sequence, on Agathe's first day, as she
walks around the retreat with various writers at work we are privy to
their voiceovered thoughts: "Marxist feminism lectures," poetry about
"muting a voice," some woolly musings on the morality of "killing and the
logical conclusion of revolutions." You know, the sort of stuff which
people think they should read, but no one really enjoys/finishes. In line
with the playful implications of the title, along with locating a lead
actor with acute queer appeal within the ostensibly heteronormative
parameters of the genre, you'd hope for more of this sort of spirited
satire, perhaps of the RomCom itself (ie, in the same manner of the
titular author's Northanger Abbey taking on the Gothic).
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life duly colours within the lines
however, with an ending and journey towards it wherein no one's life is
wrecked whatsoever, by neither a Georgian writer nor the reliably causal
structures of the genre. Breezy, comical, reassuring; you'd have to be a
severely miserable so and so not to enjoy
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, but to paraphrase an Austen heroine, the film eventually seems but a
quick succession of busy and pleasurable nothings.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is in
UK/ROI cinemas from June 13th.
