If you are in need of some escapism that piques rather than insults your intelligence, we strongly recommend the new French rom-com Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. We open it May 23 at the Royal and May 30 at all but one of our other theaters. (Its writer-director, Laura Piani, is interviewed on the latest episode of Inside the Arthouse.)
Variety’s Chief Film Critic Peter Debruge perfectly captures the film’s charms in his review, whose subhead reads “Laura Piani’s splendid debut balances reality with the effervescent charm of vintage swooners.”
Debruge’s review is worth quoting at length:
“At a time when practically the entire rom-com genre has gravitated to streaming, this bilingual theatrical offering from Sony Pictures Classics feels like the best kind of throwback. Presented as a lighthearted farce, complete with characters stepping (naked) through the wrong doors and a tense cross-country ride, in which Agathe complains in French (not realizing her companion speaks the language), the film is at once old-fashioned and refreshingly, realistically up to date in its take on modern courtship.
“Blocked in both love and literature, Agathe (Camille Rutherford) is an exasperated Frenchwoman working at Shakespeare and Company, the adorably cluttered English-language bookstore situated just a few meters from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. According to Austen’s standards, Agathe — who identifies most closely with Anne Elliot in Persuasion — might seem at genuine risk of spinsterhood, having made it to her mid-30s without a prospect. It’s been years since she’s had so much as a kiss, and the hopeless singleton finds herself pouring all of her idealism and frustration into futile creative writing exercises until … inspiration strikes during a solitary dinner as she stares deep into a novelty sake cup.
“Behind Agathe’s back, her encouraging (if frequently inappropriate) best friend Félix (Pablo Pauly) sends off the first few chapters of this new project to a writer’s residency at Austen’s onetime abode, hoping to give Agathe the “kick in the arse” she needs. Friendship, as Austen herself wrote, is “the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” The next thing she knows, Agathe is crossing the Channel to visit the author’s estate. There, she spars with (but also falls for) one of the author’s distant relatives: Austen’s priggish great-great-great-grandnephew Oliver (Charlie Anson).
“Piani shot the entire film in France, but it truly feels as if it has a foot in both cultures. Anson could be a young Rupert Everett’s bookish brother, and has clearly studied every wince and eye flutter in Hugh Grant’s arsenal, combining such tools into a 21st-century version of the Mr. Darcy archetype. From the frosty first encounter between Agathe and Oliver, in which she steps off the ferry and promptly retches on his loafers, audiences should find themselves rooting for these two to recognize how compatible they are.
“But Agathe is wrestling with more than just her insecurities, as kissing Félix just before she took the ferry has stirred up newfound feelings for her old friend. Félix is a serial womanizer and a classic cad with whom she’s always felt a certain unexplored sexual tension, despite their many years of platonic companionship, and even in his absence, this development stands to complicate whatever she feels for Oliver. (Lest one doubt where viewers’ allegiances should lie, composer Peter von Poehl’s score practically quotes “Yumeji’s Theme” from In the Mood for Love, a romantic melody that’s all but impossible to resist.)
“A few decades ago, a film like this might have had little chance of success competing with Hollywood-made rom-coms, but that steady stream has moved to, well, streaming, leaving a space wide open for audiences still looking to laugh and swoon at their local art house. As its almost defeatist title implies, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life has an intriguing relation to such escapism, recognizing that fiction in all its forms (whether literary or cinematic) has spoiled so many people’s expectations of what love can be.
“Piani casts a gangly, wide-eyed actor to play Agathe. Rutherford is far from the dime-a-dozen ingénues so often seen in French movies, with their voluptuous figures and vacant expressions — and so much the better, as it sets an unrealistic standard for young women to aspire to (while no such standard exists for their gargoyle-like male co-stars). Instead, she excels at being awkward, incorporating pratfalls and physical comedy into a role that doesn’t turn the head of every man she meets. Although Agathe is quite lovely in a less conventional way, Piani allows her intellect and personality to be the character’s most attractive traits.”
Click here to read the rest of the review.