13 hours ago
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a sweet, if predictable, rom-com worth your time
Thirty-something-year-old Parisian bookseller Agathe Robinson (Camille Rutherford, Anatomy of a Fall) is an old soul; a hopeless romantic who isn't interested in "uber sex" but the romantic courtship of a bygone era.
The star of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, (written and directed by Laura Piani), Agathe is an Anglophone who buries herself in classics — Jane Austen chief among them.
She also lives, with her sister and nephew, in an emotionally suspended state. An unspecified trauma lies at the heart of Agathe's existence that explains how she came to be this way and, gradually, we find out what the incident is that splintered her life in two.
What: A quaint but emotionally slight rom-com with an old-world feel, written and directed by Laura Piani.
Starring: Camille Rutherford, Charlie Anson, Pablo Pauly
Where: In cinemas now
Likely to make you feel: Charmed
Agathe is a daydreamer with a penchant for writing love stories in her spare time. The comfortable monotony of her life is up-ended when her womanising co-worker and best friend, Felix (Pablo Pauly) — with whom she shares a platonic if overfamiliar kinship — applies on her behalf to the prestigious Jane Austen Writing Residency in southern England.
She's successful, and it changes the course of her life.
Agathe suddenly finds herself not only with the luxury of time and a room of her own to write, but she becomes the recipient of two men's affections: Felix, who she spontaneously kisses as she leaves France, and the thorny Oliver (Charlie Anson), the great-great-great-great nephew of Jane Austen herself, who manages the residency.
Hijinks ensue in the bucolic greenery of a small England coastal town as the characters oscillate seamlessly between French and English. There are language mishaps, accidental nudity in the vein of The Proposal, and a ball right out of an Austen novel.
Agathe is ensconced in an English manor (though the the film was shot entirely in France) straight out of the novels she devours, and is being romanced in the way she so greatly desires — through pithy one-liners, disarming honesty and genteel manners. But there's a snag. Felix surprises Agathe by showing up unannounced right before the ball, and Agathe has a decision to make.
There's a little bit of Notting Hill in Agathe's vocation of bookselling (shared with Hugh Grant's William Thacker), though Paris's famed Shakespeare and Company is a more earnestly romantic backdrop than a bookstore that exclusively sells travel books.
There's also a bit of Bridget Jones in the tragicomedy of Agathe's love life, and a sprinkling of Emily Henry's Book Lovers in the enemy-to-lovers scenario that plays out in a literary world.
The film employs numerous different rom-com tropes but, to its credit, we are constantly kept guessing as to who, if anyone, Agathe will end up with.
Much like the character she plays, who has English and French parentage, Rutherford imbues Agathe with an endearing charm as she skulks around the pastoral landscape — incapable of writing as freely as her colleagues do, experiencing nature as a menace rather than a salve.
Agathe morphs into the main character of her story, but she's far from an effortlessly cool one. Emotionally dysregulated, awkward, clumsy and abrupt, Agathe has a halting yet elegant way of expressing her thoughts — prone to observing rather than experiencing. She feels like an amalgam of messy rom-com leads of yesteryear — Meg Ryan, Renee Zellweger, Drew Barrymore.
Reminiscent of Mr Darcy, Anson is Hugh Grant-lite in his depiction of the prickly and reserved Oliver, while Pauly is roguish as the caddish yet well-meaning Felix.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is at its strongest when it leans into the idiosyncrasies of its colourful cast of characters. Less successful are the overblown metaphors about writing and the confected arguments about the value of literature, though they may well be a mirror to what takes place in residencies. Most accurate would be its portrayal of writing, or perhaps how little writing happens.
Agathe's journey of discovery hinges on her creative reclamation of self as much as her ability to dive headfirst into love. When both predictably happen, the pay-off is sweet, yet strangely bathetic.
