Reviewing Jane: Now I Must Give One Smirk, And Then We May Be Rational Again

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: Jon Jones

Cast: Felicity Jones, JJ Feild, Carey Mulligan

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey is defined by a certain lack of plot and a coterie of hilariously biting, satirical characters, so it's probably the most likely entry to be adapted into a film that exactly fits my tastes. There's nothing I love more than a brisk, character-driven movie. But unfortunately, Northanger Abbey is perhaps the least known and least respected of her six novels, so it was never going to get the grandiose big-budget treatment of a Pride and Prejudice (take your pick which one I'm talking about).

It's just one of the endless pitfalls of having good taste.

In Northanger Abbey (the 2007 Masterpiece production, and boy oh boy is it going to be important to specify which one we're talking about as we get deeper into this marathon - there's literally two iterations of Emma from the exact same year), Catherine Morland (Felicity Jones) is a young teen from a family of ten. She's invited on a trip to the town of Bath with some family friends, and she doesn't hesitate at her chance to get out and see the wider world, which she's only read about in books.

Unfortunately, her perceptions of the world and the people in it are entirely based on the plots of the Gothic romance novels she devours, so she has herself a bit of a vivid imagination that hasn't exactly prepared her for the mundane realities and pettiness of the people she meets there. Although she falls in love immediately with the handsome gentleman Henry Tilney (JJ Feild, who we just saw playing a Darcy analogue in Austenland), she encounters certain obstacles in the form of the lecherous boor John Thorpe (William Beck), who fancies himself in love with her; his sister Isabella (Carey Mulligan, who we will see playing one of the assorted sisters in Pride and Prejudice - get ready for a bunch of overlaps, because the British do not skimp on their Austen adaptations), a false-faced dilettante who fancies herself in love with Catherine's brother James (Hugh O'Connor), until somebody better comes along; and Tilney's father (Liam Cunningham), a dictatorial tyrant with a nasty temper.

She is also exposed to a great number of terrible hats, such is the danger of the outside world.

Northanger Abbey is very clearly a low budget affair, but the good thing about shooting in England is that the whole country is basically a period piece, so it doesn't weigh on your wallet to find some grand crumbling castle or other to shoot in. So the locations at least provide a level of production quality that isn't reflected in, say, the lighting. 

But one odd choice that makes itself immediately known is the way that Northanger Abbey sexes up the original storyline. This only rears its ugly head in a few cases - most notably in a dalliance between Carey Mulligan and someone who is patently not her fiancé, but also in some truly disgusting extras work that includes the line "she's a ripe peach ready for the plucking" - but it's a jarring decision that adds nothing to the work and doesn't commit hard enough to feel like anything more than lascivious window dressing. It's a horny movie, but it's still a Masterpiece Theatre production, so there's a very low ceiling for what is permitted here. It feels slightly at war with its own impulses, which I guess makes it in and of itself a perfect Jane Austen character, but definitely not a satisfyingly consistent narrative.

You can't just show SHOULDERS and expect to get away with it, Masterpiece!

Also there's no getting around the score, which is just tragically miscalculated. It's like the Harry Potter theme got co-opted by a Steamboat Willie short, and it cartoonishly underscores every minuscule movement onscreen. If it turns out it's not royalty-free library music, I'd definitely start to worry about the sanity of whoever composed it, because they clearly fundamentally misunderstand the tone of Jane Austen, and possibly humanity as a whole.

But hey, we can forgive a movie its budget if it's engaging, and Northanger Abbey is... well, it tries. The most important visual element introduced into the story is frequent Scrubs-esque cutaways to Catherine Morland's imagination of what any particular moment will be like. She recasts the important figures in her life into a grand Gothic soap opera that is tremendously fun to watch, and really highlights the character perhaps even more than the book manages to. Unfortunately, this element is dropped exactly where it is needed most - when Catherine's explorations of the titular home of the Tilneys lead her to some very dangerous, incorrect assumptions about the Northanger patriarch.

The plot of the third act suffers mightily from a lack of these fantasies, telling rather than showing the entire conflict that drives the climax. You need to have read the book to get even a drop of tension out of the plot at this point, and if your movie's success relies on a viewer having read the least well-known Austen novel, that is a gargantuan failure.

JJ Feild's face isn't a failure though, so that helps smooth things over.

But Northanger Abbey isn't all bad. The pacing is fleet-footed, zipping past so quickly, you couldn't possibly be bored. And while nearly the entire ensemble gives the kind of flat, utilitarian performance you'd expect from a Masterpiece production, the three leads all provide something exciting to watch.

Felicity Jones, on the one hand, is kind of awe-inspiringly terrible, and that's not nothing. She has a rough-hewn movie star charisma that you can't help but watch, even as she indulges in a routine of indicative gawping every chance she gets. It's like she's trying to be a mime or something, and it's fascinating, but you can see the potential for her to become to blandly functional leading actress we know her as today.

Acting circles around her are the real reasons to watch the movie: Feild and especially Mulligan. Feild's Tilney is rakish and charming without seeming too much like a romantic cypher, and he and Jones have a genuine chemistry. But enough about men. This is a Jane Austen novel, and Carey Mulligan is pulling out all the stops here, burying her character's hopeless self-absorption in a series of fluttery little genteel movements that are just aching to be watched rapturously by any fan of a good diva.

All in all, Northanger Abbey is a reasonably satisfying first venture into the world of Austen, if not particularly inspiring. There are going to be a lot of future movie stars lurking about these here parts, and that excites me, but turning her most shallow novel into an even more shallow movie doesn't exactly lend me toward recommending it.

TL;DR: Northanger Abbey is an unimpressive low budget TV movie with some surprisingly high wattage stars.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1189
Other Films Based on Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey (Foster, 1987)
Ruby in Paradise (Nunez, 1993)
Northanger Abbey (Jones, 2007)

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)