Apparently, I am not the only person who never tires of romcoms in which a Jane Austen fan’s romantic life starts to mirror Austen’s stories. Because the latest example of this subgenre—a French movie titled Jane Austen Wrecked My Life—has found a distributor, even before its premiere next Monday at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Earlier this week, Sony Pictures Classics announced that it had acquired the rights to distribute Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, the feature film debut of writer-director Laura Piani, “in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and worldwide airlines.” No word on when the movie will hit all those screens, although now that they mention it, it does sound like exactly the kind of fun, frothy movie that would pass the time between beverage services on a dull transcontinental flight.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life concerns a Paris bookstore employee and aspiring writer who “finds herself in desperate singlehood” until she attends a writing residency in England and, torn between two eligible suitors, must eventually “put an end to wasting her sentimental life,” explains Sony’s press release. (Yes, I too think the release must have been translated from the French, possibly by a literal-minded chatbot.)
“Jane Austen has become a bit of a rock star in the marketplace,” the release quotes the company as saying. (Really? Who knew?) “A new modern take . . . is sure to be embraced by theatrical audiences.”
Sony Pictures Classics is no newcomer to the business of Austen on screen: The studio distributed not only the excellent 1995 Amanda Root-Ciaran Hinds Persuasion but also the enjoyable 2007 adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler’s novel The Jane Austen Book Club. A more worrisome precedent for Piani may be the company’s involvement in the truly execrable, and deservedly unsuccessful, Austenland, which concerns—what are the odds?--a Jane Austen fan who finds her romantic life taking an Austenesque turn.
Still, I always approach these projects in a spirit of dewy-eyed optimism. Jane Austen wrecked someone’s life? Where can I get my ticket?
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