Jane Austen – We Are Movie Geeks

JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE – Review

A French film about English author Jane Austen? No, a delightful contemporary French comedy, partly in English, about a young French would-be author who admires Jane Austen but who can’t seem to finish any of the novels she herself starts writing. However, an invitation to a writers’ retreat at the Austen family home in England raises hopes that her writer’s block situation could change, as well as the possibility of bigger changes in her quiet life.

With far more emphasis on the comedy side, writer/director Laura Piani has concocted a clever, contemporary, bi-lingual comedy romance centered on Agathe Robinson (a wonderful Camille Rutherford), a young half-French, half-English woman who works in Parisian bookstore that specializes in English literature, where her ease in both French and English a plus. Agathe loves her job at the bookstore but she is stuck in a rut, as an author and in life. The aspiring writer, who adores Jane Austen and wants to emulate her, long ago gave up on love, seeing herself as being like the lead character in “Persuasion,” a “faded flower” and “old maid.”

There is no need to love Jane Austen, or even know much about her, to enjoy this treat, although it is a bit more fun if you do. JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE is a comedy rather than a romantic comedy, because it is actually funny, and smartly, cleverly so, unlike the typical formulaic rom com, more in the vein of great classic comedies like “THE AWFUL TRUTH and PHILADELPHIA STORY, from an era when the best comedies were romantic comedies instead of the reverse.

Agathe lives with her beloved sister Cheryl (Annabelle Lengronne) and six-year-old nephew. Her sister is supportive and encouraging, if teasingly so, to Agathe, who is still traumatized after surviving the car accident that killed their parents. Generally, Agathe has a happy, if limited life, with her sister and nephew, although she is frustrated that she can’t seem to finish any of those novels she starts.

Her best friend, and co-worker the bookstore, is Felix (Pablo Pauly), a playful kidder who frequently hangs out at Agathe’s house with her sister and nephew. Felix has no girlfriend but has a string of romances where he strings women along – “bread-crumbing” them with texts – while seems unable to commit to just one. After sneaking a peek at her latest unfinished novel, Felix secretly signs up best friend Agathe for a writer’s retreat at the family home of Jane Austen in England.

When that surprise invitation arrives, Agathe is reluctant to go but is persuaded by her sister. She begins to hope the two-week retreat will help her break her writer’s block with her latest book. Felix drives her to the boat, even though Agathe is nervous to even be in a car again after the accident, having avoided them ever since. Felix playfully teases her on the way, then impulsively kisses her before sending her off to the ferry.

Arriving on the other side, Agathe is greeted by her driver, Oliver (Charlie Anson), who turns out to be the great-great-great-great-great grandnephew of Jane Austen, and the son of the couple who run the writers’ retreat. Oliver is an unfriendly, unpleasant, brooding Darcy type who, unfortunately for Agathe, drives a sports car. He is a teacher of contemporary literature and actually doesn’t care for the novels of his famous relative. Arriving, after some car trouble, at the Austen mansion, Agathe is charmed by her hostess Beth, who speaks French as well as English too, and her quirky host Todd () who might be in the early stages of dementia, and meets the other resident authors. She is told that the retreat will end with a ball in period costume, and a reading of each author’s writing during the retreat, a daunting prospect for Agathe.

Camille Rutherford is completely charming as Agathe. The cast is marvelous in fact, but Rutherford is particularly excellent, exuding both an appealing charm and an underlying depth and sadness linked to the traumatic deaths of her parents and her frustrations in life. Her Agathe is afraid of change yet on one level, she knows she must change, in order to become the writer she hopes to be. Pablo Pauly is silly, funny, sometimes goofy as Felix, who teases Agathe relentlessly while still projecting how much he cares about her. As Oliver, Charlie Anson is prickly and difficult at first, with an air of arrogance, but he softens as we learn more about his situation with his parents and his own romantic history. The rest of the cast are all very good, and director Laura Piani has no problem putting them into comically dignity-dinging situations.

The smart script, the wonderful performances, and Piani’s smooth direction are all supported by the beautiful sets and locations, dreamy photography, and a score that skillfully mixes modern tunes and classical selections for the perfect musical accompaniment.

Smart, clever, literary and sometimes a bit bawdy, JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE is just fun for readers of all stripes. The Jane Austen parallels are plentiful, like the author who lives with a beloved sister and has little interest in romance for herself, but subtle, as are the references to Austen novels. Those references keep us guessing as to which Austen novel this contemporary author might be in, while director Laura Piani keeps us laughing and charmed with the whole idea. While the romantic comedy genre has a dismal reputation for being dull and formulaic, JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE’s delightful burst of fresh air and literary fun is the entertaining exception.

With 2025 being the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, films and other productions referencing Austen seems to be increasingly everywhere in recent years. Some of them are swooningly romantic or tiresome in their humorless adoration of the author, in a kind of idol worship that appeals only to the most devoted fans, ironically the opposite of Austen’s own brilliantly funny, even biting social commentary. JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE is far different, one that discusses literary concepts and reflects on the life of writers generally, and built around a contemporary author, captures much more of the real feel of Austen’s writing. Any book lover is sure to enjoy this clever, playful comedy.

JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE opens in theaters on Friday, May 30, 2025.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

EMMA. – Review

*Anya Taylor-Joy stars as “Emma Woodhouse” in director Autumn de Wilde’s EMMA., a Focus Features release. Credit : Focus Features*

There have been both TV and movie adaptions of Jane Austen’s novel “Emma,” about a meddling rich young woman whose confidence exceeds her abilities, including the popular 1996 Gwyneth Paltrow version, so one might wonder why make another. But the surprisingly funny new EMMA. gives a refreshing and enjoyable answer to that question. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy (THE WITCH, SPLIT), who many first saw in her breakout performance in the indie hit THE WITCH, director Autumn de Wilde gives us a new,take on this famous character, giving her more depth and a more contemporary feel while finding new humor in the tale, and all the while keeping all the old charm of Austen’s classic tale.

The film’s slightly winking, slyly funny approach makes it a thoroughly enjoyable experience. EMMA. (the dot is part of the title) has all fine production values, lush English countryside locations, gorgeous sets and period costumes one could want in a costume drama but director de Wilde’s different approach to the central character gives her more depth and believability, and even makes the character feel more modern while keeping the story firmly in its time period.

Pretty, rich and popular, young Emma Woodhouse has hardly had a troubling day in her life, as the dryly humorous titles tell us at the beginning of EMMA. She lives in a beautiful country estate in the lovely English countryside with her doting widowed father (Bill Nighy). Her father’s one request of her is that she not leave him by getting married like her older sister Isabella (Chloe Pirrie). Emma is happy to remain unmarried, seeing herself as her father’s caretaker and embracing her dutiful daughter role with relish and great confidence in her abilities. After successfully arranging an introduction that led to her beloved governess’ (Gemma Whelan) marriage to a wealthy local landowner Mr. Weston (Rupert Graves), Emma thinks she has found her role in life – as matchmaker.

For her next project, she turns her attention to Harriet Smith (Mia Goth), a pretty girl at a local boarding school, who is the “natural child,” polite society’s term meaning born out of wedlock, whose board and education are being paid for by her mysterious father, whose identity is being kept secret. Emma is certain the secrecy means the father is wealthy, maybe even noble, and she takes Harriet under her wing with plans to find her a better match than the local farmer (Connor Swindells) with whom she is infatuated.

Emma sets out to find a match within her own elite social circle, a group that includes a wealthy handsome young neighbor George Knightly (Johnny Flynn), who has practically grown up with Emma, a preening young local vicar (Josh O’Connor), and the often-absent son (Callum Turner) of Mr. Weston, who expected to inherit a fortune from a maternal uncle. Local society also includes a well-meaning, talkative older woman, Miss Bates (played with a brilliant comic flair by Miranda Hart), who was well-born but has fallen into poverty, and prevails on her previous social standing to stay on the edges of Emma’s social circle, while talking endlessly about her accomplished niece Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson), much to Emma’s irritation.

Of course, things do not go according to plan. Emma’s good intentions and her overconfidence in her ability to fix things blows up comically, embroiling her and her social circle in a series of misunderstandings and boondoggles, often made worse by Emma’s efforts to fix things further.

Sure, it is farce at base, but director de Wilde and star Anya Taylor-Joy take steps to upend that and refresh this familiar tale. Rather than playing to broad comedy, the humor is a bit more tongue-in-cheek and sly, with the broader humor shifted to supporting characters.

Usually, Emma is played as a kind of idiot, a pretty, charming but egotistical rich girl whose meddling makes a mess of other people’s lives. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Emma is not dumb and not so much egotistical as naive, well-meaning and overconfident. She is a would-be do-gooder who in contemporary times might volunteer at a food bank or no-kill shelter with the certainty that she has the answers to just turning this thing around. By taking this approach to the character, director de Wilde and Taylor-Joy make her both more modern and take some of the “dumb blonde” sexist aspect out of the tale, without violating Austen’s classic tale. With Taylor-Joy’s fine performance, the misguided, well-meaning Emma retains her charm and innocent appeal as well as her meddling ways.

Taylor-Joy’s Emma has a mix of sweetness and naivete gives her an extra degree of charm as well as making her a more contemporary figure. The refreshed approach to the character helps reverse some of the sexist assumptions than underlie this tale, giving Emma and the other characters a more modern feel despite the costumes. It also allows the film to shift the comic exaggeration to the supporting characters, particularly the men, who in most versions escape comic skewering. In other versions, the male characters are the reasonable ones but here they are comically flawed, with human foibles and vain ambitions.

This refreshing, and funny, approach allows for both more character development for Emma and more comic space for the terrific supporting cast. Taylor-Joy does a great job of taking advantage of that room for character development, adding new depth and dimensions to Emma earlier versions lacked, while staying true to Austen and keeping all Emma’s charm. The play of complex emotion across Taylor-Joy’s face as she grapples with new insights into herself or copes with plans going awry lets the actor explore dramatic and comic aspects of the role without the usual limits. It is another performance that showcases the talent that Taylor-Joy showed in her breakout debut in indie hit THE WITCH.

The supporting cast also makes the most of new comic possibilities. Bill Nighy takes full of advantage of this, with his loopy Mr. Woodhouse, always on the alert for dangers like drafts and potential weather events, surrounding himself with screenings or refusing he leave the house. The mere mention of possible snow in an offhand remark at a dinner party propels him from the table mid-meal and sends him fleeing for his carriage, leaving his dutiful daughter Emma in his wake.

As the vicar, Josh O’Connor dives into with the most broadly comic figure, dressed in a series of exaggerated costumes, and preening, prancing and plotting with abandon. Miranda Hart who was so excellent as the tall, blushing, upper-crust midwife in BBC’s “Call the Midwife,” is another comic gem, with a hilarious motor-mouth character with equal charm. Johnny Flynn’s George is more the voice of reason trying to bring Emma down-to-earth when she goes too far, but Flynn still gets his chance at comedy bits, with a romantic comedy spin.

EMMA. is an entertaining romp with all the costume drama trimmings and a refreshing, funny new tack, which should please both Austen fans and more general audiences. All that makes it a good bet for a fun night at the movies,and a nice showcase for this talented cast. EMMA. opens Friday, February 28, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP – Review

Film comedies packed witty, biting humor and whip-smart dialog are pretty rare these days. So LOVE & FRIENDSHIP, director Whit Stillman’s screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s lesser-known early short novel “Lady Susan,” is particularly welcome. With Kate Beckinsale shinning in the lead role as clever, ruthless Lady Susan, the witty comedy is even more delicious.

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP is pure fun, a brilliant comedy filled with laugh-out-loud moments and terrific ensemble performances by a largely British cast, making it entertaining even for those who are not big fans of Jane Austen or costume films.

Unlike other more familiar Austen works, LOVE & FRIENDSHIP is more comedy than romance, although there is some of that too. The story might be described as a comedy of manners but that label makes this very funny film sound more tame than it really is. The story is set in the 1790s, a little earlier than most Austen stories, and focuses on the mother more than the daughter, as Austen usually does.

Writer/director Whit Stillman (“The Last Days of Disco”) crafts Austen’s work into a sharp, zinger-filled, twisty romp, a far funnier, smarter comedy and a refreshing change from the typical comedies in theaters now.

Kate Beckinsale turns in one of her sharpest, funniest performances as Lady Susan. Since her husband’s death left her with a daughter and a noble title but insufficient funds, she has stayed with a string of better-off relatives. Sharp-witted Susan has a well-deserved reputation as an accomplished flirt and a woman who can wrap a man around her finger. Now that her daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark) has reached a marriageable age, Lady Susan is determined to find her a rich husband, and one for herself as well.

That is the plan when a touch of scandal, involving Susan’s married lover, the handsome Lord Manwaring (Lochlann O’Mearain), brings her to the quiet country estate, Churchill, of her late husband’s brother., where she hopes to hide out while gossip dies down. Charles Vernon (Justin Edwards) welcomes his sister-in-law but his wife Catherine DeCourcy Vernon (Emma Greenwell), who has never met her before, is more leery, as Lady Susan’s fearsome reputation for twisting circumstances to her advantage, particularly with men, precedes her.

Susan has her eye on Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel), the handsome bachelor brother of her hostess. Catherine regards that possibility with suspicion and alarm, as do her parents, Lady DeCourcy (Jemma Redgrave) and Sir Reginald DeCourcy (James Fleet). Her husband Charles has a more kindly view of his brother’s widow.

Susan arrives at the estate with a friend, Mrs. Cross (Kelley Campbell), who assists her like a combination companion, lady’s maid and seamstress, although as she tells her hostess, it would be “offensive to us both” if she paid her. However, Susan’s romantic plans are complicated when her daughter Frederica also arrives, tearfully fleeing the attentions of Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett), the always-sunny but dull-witted wealthy aristocrat that her mother had selected as a suitable husband for her daughter. The very silly Sir James soon arrives as well, uninvited, and becomes another house guest.

Susan confides her frustration and plots to her close friend Alicia Johnson (Chloe Sevigny), an American married to an English aristocrat, the “very respectable” Mr. Johnson (Stephen Fry). Their conversations allows us to see inside Susan’s Machiavellian plans. To make things a big more complicated, Mr. Johnson’s former ward is Lady Lucy Manwaring (Jenn Murray), the jealous, hysterical rich wife of Susan’s lover.

It may seem like a lot of characters to keep track of but Stillman’s well-crafted script and firm directorial hand keeping things running smoothly and makes keeping everyone straight easy. Of course, no one does this kind of story as well as Austen.

Unsurprisingly, the period costumes are gorgeous and perfect, and sets and locations are lush and lovely, as is the polished photography. The gracious beauty of the clothes and locations deliciously contrasts with the ruthless social maneuvering taking place, part of the humor.

Few complications are beyond Susan’s powers to turn to her advantage, although plots may not turn out exactly as planned. Beckinsale’s fast-talking Susan is a force of nature, who both lights up and transforms every room she enters, but really the whole cast is a dream, nailing each character perfectly so that the whole plot unfolds in hilarious precision. Sevigny is particularly good as Susan’s confident, whose husband is alarmed by her wife’s friendship and threatens the unthinkable – leaving London for the wilds of Connecticut. Greenwell is very good as Catherine, appalled and intimidated by the relentless Susan. Samuel is also excellent as Reginald, who falls under Susan’s charms, and expresses the best shock at Sir James’ jaw-dropping witlessness. Bennett is wonderfully funny as the always happy, clueless Sir James. The ensemble cast works great as a clockwork whole.

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP is just great fun, a fast-paced and brilliant gem that is sure to enchant Austen fans and non-fans alike.

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP opens in St. Louis on May 27th, 2016

OVERALL RATING: 5 OUT OF 5 STARS

Jane Austen’s Unfinished Novella “Lady Susan” Adapted In LOVE & FRIENDSHIP Film – Stars Kate Beckinsale And Chloë Sevigny

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP is an adaptation of young Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan, believed to have been written in the mid 1790s but revised up to a fair copy prepared in 1805 and finally published by her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, in 1871.

Kate Beckinsale on Lady Susan:

“A new Jane Austen is quite a find, I think. It’s quite exciting to find something that people are not necessarily familiar with, either the trajectory of the story, or the characters.

“The thing about the Lady Susan Vernon character is that, unusually for romantic literature, at the core she’s not a very good person. And yet, she’s celebrated in the novella. It is extraordinarily well written and well observed and well drawn.

“This is an epistolary novel and it has its own difficulties in adapting. Lady Susan doesn’t have the same kind of reflection as Emma has, or self-analysis.”

For Austen fans, this is very exciting. Director Whit Stillman says, “Seeing an adaptation of Jane Austen’s early (and not-truly-finished) novella concerning the clever and triumphant Lady Susan Vernon gives hope of adding another Austen volume to the shelf of her great mature works – now in film form.”

Check out the brand new trailer.

Beautiful young widow Lady Susan Vernon visits to the estate of her in-laws to wait out the colourful rumours about her dalliances circulating through polite society.

Whilst ensconced there, she decides to secure a husband for herself and a future for her eligible but reluctant daughter, Frederica.

In doing so she attracts the simultaneous attentions of the young, handsome Reginald DeCourcy, the rich and silly Sir James Martin and the divinely handsome, but married, Lord Manwaring, complicating matters severely.

Catherine Vernon (nee DeCourcy) describes Lady Susan, per Jane Austen:

“She is really excessively pretty… I have seldom seen so lovely a Woman as Lady Susan. She is delicately fair, with fine grey eyes & dark eyelashes; & from her appearance one would not suppose her more than five & twenty… I cannot help feeling that she possesses an uncommon union of Symmetry, Brilliancy, & Grace. Her address to me was so gentle, frank, & even affectionate, that, if I had not known how much she has always disliked me for marrying Mr. Vernon… I should have imagined her an attached friend… Her Countenance is absolutely sweet, & her voice & manner winningly mild. I am sorry it is so, for what is this but Deceit?”

English novelist, biographer and critic Margaret Drabble says of Jane Austen:

There are some great writers who wrote too much. There are others who wrote enough. There are yet others who wrote nothing like enough to satisfy their admirers, and Jane Austen is certainly one of these. There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare, that one can imagine….

[Lady Susan was written in the period of the mid-1790s] when Jane Austen was about to start working on her first version of Sense and Sensibility, which was called Elinor and Marianne, and which was also, like Lady Susan, written in letter form. She was about this stage twenty years old.

Clearly, she liked Lady Susan well enough to make a fair copy of it, and not well enough to pursue its publication. Perhaps she was thinking of publication when she copied it, but none of her novels appeared until 1811, and by that point she may well have become dissatisfied with it again.

One could reasonably conjecture that one of her dissatisfactions sprang from the form in which she chose to write it. The letter form of the novel had been popular in the eighteenth century, and was very much a living convention when she tried to use it, but it did not really suit her talents — witness the fact that the second draft of Sense and Sensibility was in the third-person style of narration which she was to use from then on. The letter form is an artificial convention, and she felt its limitations: stylistically, she was a far from conventional writer, and as Virginia Woolf pointed out, she had the courage and originality to find he own way of expressing herself — her own subject matter, her own plots, her own prose. She admired Richardson greatly, all of whose works are written in letters, and she enjoyed Fanny Burney, but their method does not come naturally to her: she points out in her Conclusion, ‘This correspondence, by a meeting between some of the parties and a separation between the others could not, to the great detriment of the Post Office revenue, be continued longer,’ which indicates her sense of unreality in keeping the game up….

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP was an Official Selection of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival ‘Premiere’ Category.

Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions will release LOVE & FRIENDSHIP in theaters on May 13, 2016.

Win Passes To The Advance Screening Of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES In St. Louis

A zombie outbreak has fallen upon the land in this reimagining of Jane Austen’s classic tale of the tangled relationships between lovers from different social classes in 19th century England.

Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet (Lily James) is a master of martial arts and weaponry and the handsome Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley) is a fierce zombie killer, yet the epitome of upper class prejudice. As the zombie outbreak intensifies, they must swallow their pride and join forces on the blood-soaked battlefield in order to conquer the undead once and for all.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES is based on the book by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.

The film, directed by Burr Steers, also stars Jack Huston, Bella Heathcote, Douglas Booth with Matt Smith, Charles Dance and Lena Headey.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES opens in theaters February 5, 2016.

WAMG invites you to enter for a chance to win a pass (Good for 2) to the advance screening of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES on Tuesday, February 2 at 7PM in the St. Louis area.

We will contact the winners by email.

Answer the following:

What is the name of the prequel to Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?

TO ENTER, ADD YOUR NAME, ANSWER AND EMAIL IN OUR COMMENTS SECTION BELOW.

OFFICIAL RULES:

1. YOU MUST BE IN THE ST. LOUIS AREA THE DAY OF THE SCREENING.

2. A pass does not guarantee a seat at a screening. Seating is on a first-come, first served basis. The theater is overbooked to assure a full house. The theater is not responsible for overbooking.

3. No purchase necessary

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA for the folllwing reasons: zombie violence and action, and brief suggestive material.

Varèse Sarabande will release the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on February 5 and on CD February 19, 2016. The album features the original music by composer Fernando Velázquez (CRIMSON PEAK, THE IMPOSSIBLE).

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It’s Not April Fool’s Day Yet, but ‘Pride and Predator’ is Coming

Elton John’s Rocket Pictures and first-time feature director William Felix Clark are putting together the showdown of all time with ‘Pride and Predator’.

In the film, written by Clark, Andrew Kemble, and John Pape, aliens land in the ‘Pride and Prejudice’ story and begin killing off the characters. Ã‚ Don’t know if it’s going to be the actual Predator, but it’s going to be awesome just the same.

“It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect,” said David Furnish, one of the producers on the film.

Shooting (and mass slaughter of British snobbery) will begin in London later this year.

Source: Variety

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OVERALL RATING: 5 OUT OF 5 STARS

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