Reviewing Jane: I Often Think It Odd That It Should Be So Dull

 In which we review (almost) every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen.

Year: 2007

Director: Julian Jarrold

Cast: Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy, Julie Walters 

Run Time: 2 hours

MPAA Rating: PG

If you took the opportunity to read my review for the dutiful downer Miss Austen Regrets, you may have noticed the many comments sniping at literary biopic motion pictures for generally being intolerably stupid. In truth that was largely aimed at Shakespeare in Love. I hadn't seen Becoming Jane since high school so I was willing to assume that my opinion formed at that time would hold no weight, because not only have I come a long way in my approach to analyzing the worth of cinema, I understand infinitely more about Austen and the breadth of her work than I did at the time. Astonishingly, I think I have now become the first person in human history to agree with an opinion I held in high school.

Hold onto your hats, folks.

Becoming Jane is the story of, astonishingly, a young Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway). She is one of those modern women plunked down in the past that we like to position as protagonists in historical dramas, rebelling against gender boundaries and holding fast to her belief that she can contribute more to the world as an author than as some rich man's wife. There is indeed a rich man around to test that theory, the nephew of local fancypants Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith), who she refuses despite the encouragement of her mom (Julie Walters) and dad (James Cromwell). Her heart belongs to another, the uncouth boxer and judge's nephew Tom LeFroy (James McAvoy), even though - would you believe it - she at first finds him prideful and perhaps develops a bit of a prejudice against him.

The course of true love never did run smooth, and it's famous fact that Jane Austen died without ever marrying, but just maybe this youthful romance will inspire her to write six of the most famous books about love of all time.

Starting with Pride & Prejudice, because this movie spits in the face of her publishing history.

Yes, this is one of those incredibly crass movies that posits that all an author has to do to create a literary masterwork is to write down the exact events that are happening in their lives and change the names. So even though it's based on her actual life (extremely loosely, I might have mentioned), we should approach this as an adaptation of one of her novels because it literally is, all the way down to the Lady Catherine de Bourgh of it all.

The core of a Jane Austen novel is the effortless blending of biting satirical observations of the landed gentry with earnest, effective romantic drama. Becoming Jane has neither. As an evocation of Austen's comic gift, Miss Austen Regrets is leaps and bounds ahead of Becoming Jane - and that movie saw fit to have their Jane just wander around quoting all of the best lines of dialogue she had already written. The Austen of Becoming Jane is certainly headstrong and willing to defend the use of irony in her writing, but she almost never indulges herself in it, preferring to hide in corners and cry wherever possible.

And as a romance, Becoming Jane leans entirely on our desire to see the pretty white people make out. They put almost no work into depicting why LeFroy and Austen might actually be interested in one another, they just kind of quietly transition from hate to love offscreen. And sure, they are an aesthetically pleasing couple, but in action it's a little hard to take Hathaway's barely-there British accent too seriously.

Those lips weren't made for accents, they were made for smooching!

I probably shouldn't have expected a multi-faceted study of domestic life and a lady's perspective on romance from a movie that doesn't see fit to have its female lead character speak a significant line of dialogue until about fifteen minutes in, so I guess that's what I get. 

Taken solely as a historical costume drama, Becoming Jane is wholly acceptable, with plenty of beautiful compositions of the bucolic British countryside blooming with a timeless elegance. Although if we're speaking literally, the costumes themselves aren't quite that interesting, damn those prim Regency-era frocks. The only exceptions to the rule of "plain earth tones, let's not make a fuss" are Tom LeFroy's elegant coats and Lady Gresham's voluminous outfits that are ready-made for drag performances.

I've now seen Becoming Jane twice in my life and I have absolutely no desire to ever see it a third. This coming from someone who's halfway through a volume of Jane Austen's letters to her sister Cassandra (also a character in the movie, but so minor as to not actually deserve a mention), which are mostly just descriptions of travel and who was at what balls.

TL;DR: Becoming Jane is a disappointing effort at capturing the wit and wisdom of one of history's greatest authors.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 846

Other Films Based on Jane Austen in General

Becoming Jane (Jarrold, 2007)

Miss Austen Regrets (Lovering, 2007)

The Jane Austen Book Club (Swicord, 2007)

Austenland (Hess, 2013)

Reviewing Jane: Nothing Ever Fatigues Me But Doing What I Do Not Like

In which we review (almost) every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen.

Year: 2007

Director: Jeremy Lovering

Cast: Olivia Williams, Imogen Poots, Hugh Bonneville

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

It is no surprise that Jane Austen got the Shakespeare in Love treatment. Another British writer of popular romance works with an interesting historical life? Yeah, of course. There are only two things surprising about filmmakers cranking out a lightly fictionalized biopic of Austen: the first is that they waited almost a decade to make one, and the second is that they made two in the same goddamn year. The much more well-known Becoming Jane graced screens in 2007, shortly followed on British television by today's subject: Miss Austen Regrets.

Although, from the looks of this poster, maybe I made a mistake and I'm reviewing a 90's slasher movie instead.

Miss Austen Regrets, based on historical record, letters, and a lot of sweaty fantasizing, tells the story of the final months in the life of Jane Austen (Olivia Williams, who played Jane Fairfax in the BBC adaptation of Emma). Around the time that she is trying to get Emma published, she is visiting relatives, specifically her niece Fanny (Imogen Poots) who is deciding whether or not she should invite and accept the proposal of her suitor John Plumptre (Tom Hiddleston, with alarmingly curly hair). Watching this young woman experience love for the first time ignites reminiscences of her former suitors, broken engagements, and all the choices that led her to write and be the woman she is. Things are further complicated by the arrival of an old, now married flame Rev. Brook Bridges (Hugh Bonneville, AKA Paddington's dad).

And she never doesn't wear that bonnet that she has in that one drawing of her that everyone has seen.

Like all literary biopics, no matter how good, Miss Austen Regrets is a teensy bit dumb and doesn't give nearly enough credit to the author's powers of imagination. The characters in these movies always just write down exactly what happens to them and it magically turns into their well-known work (in this case she's directly inspired by the events of the movie to write Persuasion rather than Romeo & Juliet or Pride & Prejudice, so at least the filmmakers assume we're well-read this time). Also, I don't think Jane Austen just walked around saying random lines from her books in conversation as if she had just come up with them on the spot.

Now I don't have enough context for how well the film actually depicts Austen's life (though this watch has inspired me to crack open the giant compendium of her letters that has been collecting dust on my To Read shelf), but frankly that isn't a particularly interesting way to judge a movie regardless. However, that context might have allowed me to get more of a grip on the character study the filmmakers are attempting to play out here. 

Maybe what they're presenting here is entirely out of whatever historical record they could cobble together, but from my vantage point it seems incredibly messy. The script can't decide if Austen is a miserable spinster, a flirty sarcastic minx, a bitter drunk, or a playful feminist icon. And they're certainly not attempting to give her depth by showing she can be all of these things at once, because the tone keep erratically shifting around her (it also can't keep its eye on its secondary characters, shuttling Imogen Poots to the background too often for that storyline to really have the emotional meat on its bones it clearly desires). It's hard to get a bead on what this movie is trying to say about Austen, either psychologically or thematically, and once it ends it leaves you with a profound sense of "oh, that's it?"

Also the costumes are incredibly boring, I don't care if they're authentic. This is CINEMA, people!

Olivia Williams makes a game attempt at shoving all of these different characters into a single suitcase called Jane Austen. Her emotional scenes definitely sing, but they don't fit together in any sort of meaningful order or show any sort of actual progress to the character's arc. Her best moments are when she gets to just sit down with other characters and display her sparkling wit (entirely pilfered from any available Austenana). And at least there's a reliable stable of British acting personalities around to do the things that they do well and amuse eagle-eyed viewers (a special shout-out to Phyllida Law, who played Mrs. Bates in that other 1996 Emma, here playing Austen's mother).

And while Miss Austen Regrets never claimed to be mimicking the tone of one of Austen's novels, the endless references and homages to her work made me expect a film with a tone that was a little less, how you say... fucking depressing. It's a bitter, sad movie whose grueling grimness feels especially unearned by its failures as a character piece. It's certainly not a bad movie, even if it's an unfocused one, but I would certainly have enjoyed it for what it was if it didn't ultimately decide to be so punishing.

TL;DR: Miss Austen Regrets is an insubstantial character study but at least a fairly well-researched one.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 881

Other Films Based on Jane Austen in General

Becoming Jane (Jarrold, 2007)

Miss Austen Regrets (Lovering, 2007)

The Jane Austen Book Club (Swicord, 2007)

Austenland (Hess, 2013)

Reviewing Jane: The Person, Be It Gentleman Or Lady, Who Has Not Pleasure In A Good Novel, Must Be Intolerably Stupid

In which we review (almost) every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen, as I read through her extended bibliography for the first time.

Year: 2007

Director: Robin Swicord

Cast: Emily Blunt, Hugh Dancy, Amy Brenneman

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

The menopausal rom-com Book Club hit theaters earlier this year to the delight of almost nobody, but one positive to its release is that it had me thinking about reigniting my dormant Jane Austen marathon, which slumbered a bit during my summer of slashing. Honestly, it's an excellent way of transitioning back between the two, because once again we revisit an older title that is in some way thematically linked to a new film. This time it's The Jane Austen Book Club, another film about how the literature that women in a book club choose to read bleeds out into their personal lives. Only this time it's a lot less elderly raunch and a lot more illegal activity with minors.

And wigs so bad they qualify as a capital offense.

In the Jane Austen Book Club, a group of friends who have no reason to hang out with one another and seem to actively hate each other most of the time start a book club. About Jane Austen. And wouldn't you know it, but their lives are kind of similar to Austen's novels. Sort of. At least, Jane Austen's novels as interpreted by a high school senior who skimmed her Wikipedia entry.

Each of the main characters leads discussion on a novel, which shockingly ties into their own storylines: 

Prudie (Emily Blunt) is a clumsily-named high school teacher who is nursing a crush on a student (Kevin Zegers) and ignoring her useless husband Dean (Marc Blucas, of the least-liked season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but might just find a way to rekindle their romance á là Persuasion.

Bernadette (Kathy Baker) is six times divorced and the mother of the group, just like Pride and Prejudice I guess.

Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) is a librarian who is separated from her terrible husband Daniel (Jimmy Smits), and much like her book Mansfield Park, she... marries her cousin? OK, I honestly don't see the connection in this one.

Allegra (Maggie Grace) is Sylvia's lesbian daughter, an impulsive girl who lets her heart lead her like Marianne in Sense and Sensibility. 

Jocelyn (Maria Bello) is a happily single dog breeder who acts like Samantha Jones on downers. When she meets clueless tech wunderkind Grigg (Hugh Dancy), she tries time and again to set him up with Sylvia, not noticing that they're perfect together. This one actually has a lot in common with Emma, so good on them. Also Grigg is a sexy idiot like Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey.

This movie has an unmotivated pan all the way down to his crotch, which is in and of itself an argument for why more women should direct movies.

As I've already intimated, the screenplay for The Jane Austen Book Club is... not the best. Not only is it a jumbled mess that favors the worst, flattest characters in terms of screen time, it is replete with terrible Oscar monologues where a character sits someone down and tells them their entire backstory in one fell swoop. It's crudely constructed pabulum that whips up conflict out of nothing and always ends each segment with someone storming out of book club.

This quotidian style of drama might have been actually evocative of the storytelling of Jane Austen if the movie didn't insist on being ever so slightly edgy, in that way that pushes the envelope exactly zero point one degrees. It pulls its punches so radically that the lesbian character fades away like a ghost, the toxic heteronormative relationships patch themselves up presumably to the detriment of everyone, and Prudie's hideously inappropriate crush is treated like an actual viable option for her to pursue. The latter storyline is just sick when presented this way, and has no place in the middle of everyone else's more grounded subplot.

Emily Blunt the actress is doing a serviceable job bringing this cartoon character to life, but she's hardly the standout in a cast of people just barely making an impression, lost in a whirlwind of empty bloviating dialogue and Brits forcing American accents.

"I loike sci-fi, just liek a regglar Amairican!"

At least the movie is a drama, because the brief attempt at humor produced the ear-splitting pun "A Nightmare on Northanger Abbey Street," so the movie could have been much worse if it attempted to be funny all the way through.

The one thing I will say about the film is that, unlike Book Club, the characters actually do sit down for in-depth discussions of the books. I like the fact that the film assumes its audience is literary enough to understand references to Fanny Price and Captain Wentworth, and allows its characters to be intelligent and engage with the material. Maybe that doesn't make for a good script, but it's actually authentic, a quality that this movie desperately lacks at most turns.

TL;DR: The Jane Austen Book Club is a messy, joylessly plotty film that's much too full of itself.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 872
Other Films Based on Jane Austen in General

Becoming Jane (Jarrold, 2007)

Miss Austen Regrets (Lovering, 2007)
The Jane Austen Book Club (Swicord, 2007)
Austenland (Hess, 2013)

Reviewing Jane: Facts Are Such Horrid Things!

In which we review (almost) every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen, as I read through her extended bibliography for the first time.

Year: 2016

Director: Whit Stillman

Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny, Xavier Samuel

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

The thing about Jane Austen is that she only wrote six novels. That doesn't provide a lot of material for the endless adaptation machine, even given the way Pride and Prejudice greases the gears. So the only thing shocking about the fact that filmmakers began to dig through her assorted unpublished short works was that it took until 2016 for it to happen.

Love & Friendship, from director Whit Stillman (who directed 1990's Metropolitan, a loose adaptation of Mansfield Park that will arrive on the pages of this here blog sooner than later), was adapted from Austen's 50-page novella "Lady Susan," written by Austen most likely in her early 20's, shortly before she began drafting what would become her first published novel: Sense and Sensibility. One other thing about "Lady Susan": It's f**king awesome.

It's like RuPaul's Drag Race crossed with Breaking Bad and I'm not the slightest bit kidding.

I'm fairly convinced that Jane Austen is the inventor of the female antihero, because Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale) is one badass broad. A widow of some ill-repute who has just finished seducing the married Lord Manwaring (Lochlann O'Mearáin, who I do believe is Irish) away from his wife (Jennifer Murray) with no intention of returning his affections, she decides to shake the spot and take up residence at Churchill, the country residence of her former sister-in-law Catherine Vernon (Emma Greenwell, who is familiar with Austen work considering she played Caroline Bingley in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) and her husband Charles (Justin Edwards).

Her plans to seduce Catherine's rich, handsome, and stupid brother Reginald De Courcy (Xavier Samuel) are challenged by the unexpected appearance of her neglected daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark, who was also in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as Georgiana Darcy), Frederica's foolish and unwanted suitor Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett), and Mr. Johnson (Stephen Fry), the interfering husband of Susan's best friend and confidante Alicia (Chloë Sevigny). Like all Jane Austen works, the cast list is longer than a slasher movie, but trust me this all makes sense.

All you need to know for now is that Lady Susan orchestrates some Heath Ledger Joker levels of manipulation and subterfuge to get what she wants, any way she can.

That's why her hair is so big. It's full of secrets.

As much as I do enjoy the plot of "Lady Susan," probably the biggest challenge in adapting it is that the novella was epistolary: presenting the plot in the form of a series of letters sent between various characters. Love & Friendship can't entirely shake the constraints of that form of storytelling, and the way it finds ways to unite characters who are separated by distance (especially Mrs. Johnson and Lady Susan, who almost never speak face to face in the source material) are sometimes jarring and distracting, taking time away from the main thrust of the plot. 

However, Love & Friendship also does its best to embrace that epistolary format, and a scene where a husband is reading a letter aloud to his wife, the words appearing on the screen as he speaks them, is one of the most delightful of the film. There's a certain sense of formal daring to a lot of this movie, actually, at least in most of its early moments. For one thing, the characters are all introduced with their own title card, with a pithy descriptor introducing their function to the plot, which is a hell of a lot of fun. This playful meta humor doesn't travel very far past the opening thirty minutes, but it's strong enough that you're still thinking about it when the credits roll.

Beyond that, the filmmaking isn't particularly stunning, save for the way it spins a remarkably small budget into some sumptuous gowns, drawing rooms, and hats that never cease to bring joy.

Honestly, the criminally insane hats are one of the main reasons I'm doing this marathon.

Fortunately for any filmmaker without a lot of money, the crux of any Jane Austen adaptation is the dialogue and the actors, and both of these are perfectly prepared in Love & Friendship. Kate Beckinsale obviously gets the best, most bitingly sardonic lines as she outmaneuvers the dozen pawns in her game of love and lust, but the ensemble she is surrounded with is certainly up to snuff. The clear standout is Tom Bennett, who takes his character as written and tears him right off the page, bringing him to life with a clamoring of clipped Britishisms and awkward mumbles that will have you giggling so hard you can barely breathe.

The cast is a well-oiled machine, talking past one another at a swift rate that sweeps you up in their emotional interplay. The only two dark spots are Chloë Sevigny, who has trouble justifying her American accent and presence in general (the character is just a sounding board for Lady Susan and a vehicle for narrative drama who doesn't have much agency herself) in scenes that were already a bit wobbly, and Jenn Murray who is certainly funny but whose hysterical jilted wife schtick is far too shrill and hyperbolic for the genteel comedy-of-manners tone that the film has built up around it.

Austen is funny but she's QUIET, my dear.

But in spite of its occasional flaws, Love & Friendship is still one of the best, truest Austen adaptations out there. No Austen movie is a faithful resurrection of the author without an enormous dollop of biting, satirical humor, and this movie is a chock-full barrel of literary laffs. And there's one thing I've started to notice in these Austen adaptations. Obviously, dancing and balls appear in some form or another in all of her works, but if a film can lift up the obligatory dance number to something other than people fumbling around in period costume to fulfill a requirement, I count it as a success.

Take the dance sequence in Pride and Prejudice, which beautifully isolates Lizzy and Darcy by removing everyone else in the room during a moment of true connection. That's the high-water mark by which I measure these things, but Love & Friendship comes pretty damn close with a line dance that dizzyingly highlights the confused passing-along of lovers and friends that has happened since Lady Susan came into their lives. It's almost a ballet of Midsummer Night's Dream, cementing in a dozen lovesick character dynamics with just two minutes of physical movement.

So Love & Friendship might not be the best of these out there, but it's certainly top-tier Austen. It's fizzy and engaging, with a highly satisfying portrayal of one of her best characters holding court at the center of everything. What's not to like?

TL;DR: Love & Friendship is a funny, charming bit of Jane Austen apocrypha.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1283

Reviewing Jane: It Is A Truth Universally Acknowledged That A Movie Fan In Possession Of A Blog Must Be In Want Of A Marathon

In which we review (almost) every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen, as I read through her extended bibliography for the first time.

Year: 2013

Director: Jerusha Hess

Cast: Keri Russell, JJ Feild, Jennifer Coolidge

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Yup, folks, this blog is about to get Jane Austen-ified. The boyfriend is taking a class where he has to read all six of her novels, and I thought I'd read along with him because like most humans on this planet, I'd only ever read Pride and Prejudice. We're halfway through already, and I've been enjoying it immensely. So you know what that means, readers... 

Get ready for a buttload of gentility!

In Austenland, Jane Hayes (Keri Russell) is hopelessly obsessed with the works of Jane Austen (I can't relate to that at all). Against the better wishes of her friends, she has sunk almost her entire savings into the trip of a lifetime: a resort that replicates Regency era romance with a troupe of actors and promises a (fictional) engagement by the end of the trip. But for somebody who has already immersed herself so thoroughly in Austen (although the screenwriters only seem to be aware of Pride and Prejudice and like one scene in Sense and Sensibility), the lines between reality and fantasy might just begin to blur.

Along with her fellow guests - the crass Miss Elizabeth Charming (Jennifer Coolidge) who seems to think she's at some sort of fantasy whorehouse, and Lady Amelia Hartwright (Georgia King), who is freakishly thorough in her commitment to role playing - Jane (adopting the name Miss Jane Erstwhile) must battle for the affections of the foppish Colonel Andrews (James Callis), the rugged explorer Captain George East (Ricky Whittle), and the standoffish Henry Nobley (JJ Feild). But sometimes, when the fantasy becomes too overwhelming to her, she falls into the arms of employee/stable boy Martin (Bret McKenzie), whose modern sensibility and scruffy reality she finds refreshing.

His New Zealand accent probably doesn't hurt, either.

Austenland is one of the most conceptually broken romantic comedies I've seen in a good long while. Because honestly, Jennifer Coolidge is kind of right. There is something really creepy and manipulative about this whole process, not to mention the fact that it probably breaks a half dozen laws and statutes. And don't even get me started on the fact that a trio of customers does not the rent on a Regency manor pay. But economics and ethics aside, we should probably allow a movie its concept, especially when it's one as audacious and bizarre as this one.

The comedy that the film is peddling - while not in the least bit in the vein of something Austen might actually write - is at least charming enough to keep the whole boat afloat. It's quietly silly in a very British kind of way, and it takes a bit to ramp itself up into something genuinely sparkling, but it hinges on a handful of truly great performances. Jennifer Coolidge, of course, provides an endless source of off-the-wall humor (according to the filmmakers, she could barely be pressed to memorize her lines and just said whatever she felt like), and although her character is entirely one-note, the delivery is still sublime.

But for once in her beautiful life, Coolidge isn't the best part of this project. No, that would be Georgia King, whose body-and-soul commitment to her character's commitment is the most hilarious thing I've seen in a long time. It's a loopy performance, providing a funhouse mirror interpretation of British gentility from someone who has absolutely no idea what that actually entails. She physically dominates the screen with a series of prim little hops and exaggerated gestures, all marinated in an extremely peculiar, chewy accent that never fails to astonish in its inadequacy. 

Look at all this comedy gold! And Keri Russell!

OK, to be fair to Keri Russell, the lead of a romantic comedy very rarely gets to be actually funny. She does her best to generate chemistry with every male lead and she succeeds, and that's the start and end of her duty to this movie. The men are of a piece less interesting than the women, though since when has that not been the case?

Beyond the actors, there's not much to look at in the film. It's presented in the rather flat, well-lit style of a comedy director who doesn't really feel like getting in the way. The soundtrack is pretty great, but digging any deeper past the characters isn't really worth your time. Austenland isn't about aesthetics. It's barely about plot! (And given the fact that it laughs off a sexual assault scene like it's a goofily eccentric bit of behavior, it's probably good that the plotting doesn't get center stage here) It's also a shallow scrape at the world of Austen, really underserving characters that really should at least pretend to know more about her books than the fact that Mr. Darcy was a grump. 

But insofar as it's about wish fulfillment and charm, it gets the job done. Sometimes you don't need depth in a movie. You need to laugh at talented actresses doing their best to tickle your funny bone, and there's more than enough of them populating Austenland to have a good time from start to finish.

TL;DR: Austenland is a bit nonsensical, but charming in a way that - while almost antithetical to the work of Jane Austen - keeps you from disliking a single minute.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 926
Other Films Based on Jane Austen in General

Becoming Jane (Jarrold, 2007)

Miss Austen Regrets (Lovering, 2007)
The Jane Austen Book Club (Swicord, 2007)
Austenland (Hess, 2013)