Last year, when I first heard about the new French romcom Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, I predicted that its romantic triangle, pitting Heroine’s Rakish Best Friend against Enticing Darcyesque Stranger, would end in victory for Best Friend.
It appears that I was wrong.
No, I haven’t yet seen the movie: Although it’s headed for screens in France on either January 22 or February 5, depending which website you consult, I can’t find a U.S. release date anywhere. (International movie distributors take delight in vexing us Janeites. They have no compassion on our poor nerves.)
Instead, I base my analysis on a recent interview with writer/director Laura Piani and co-star Charlie Anson, who spoke to the British entertainment website The Upcoming during the Marrakech International Film Festival. The festival ended more than a month ago, but the fifteen-minute clip went up on YouTube only recently.
Anson, an appropriately dashing Brit (green eyes, cut-glass accent, dark hair with a Hugh Grant-ish flop), plays Enticing Darcyesque Stranger in the movie. It's a step up from his previous Austen outing, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, in which he played Mr. Hurst, and the tenor of the conversation makes clear that this time around, he's the romantic lead.*
Which is about the only thing that the conversation makes clear, since a combination of not-great interview questions (“What do you think it is about Jane Austen that people keep coming back to?” *snore*) and muddled replies will likely leave most viewers with absolutely no idea what the story is about.
(Luckily, my blog readers already know: It’s about an Austen fan/bookseller/aspiring novelist who attends a writer’s retreat in England and finds her romantic life mirroring Austen’s fiction. Not the freshest of premises, but it’s all in the execution.)
To be fair, Anson’s summary of the movie (“optimistic, kind of playful, just quite wholesome”) makes it sound like a comforting warm blanket of a film. Cue up Netflix and grab the popcorn!
Meanwhile, Piani has some engaging things to say about Austen ("she actually deals with subjects that are still super-important nowadays. . . . the question of how to be free, how to keep freedom within the love story”), and she says them in a super-adorable French accent. Plus, I can’t resist anyone who cites that sublimely bittersweet romcom The Shop Around the Corner as one of her cinematic influences. (Haven’t seen it? Run, do not walk.)
Of course, it doesn’t matter to me if the promotion for Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is confusing and cliché-ridden. I’m there for this movie no matter what: They had me at “Jane Austen.” If only I could find out when it’s going to be opening.
* As a person whose name has been mangled in more ways than I can count (please--no Deb, Debbie, Debby, or Debra, and no Yaffee, Yasse, Jaffe, or Jaffee), I felt a twinge of empathy when I noticed on-screen titles dubbing him Charlie Hanson. Better an errant “H” than a misbegotten “M,” I suppose, but really—check this stuff on IMDB, kids.
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