Driving through the countryside, aspiring author Agathe (Camille Rutherford) and grumpy literature professor Oliver (Charlie Anson) argue about Jane Austen.
He might be driving Agathe to a Jane Austen-inspired writers’ residency – and he might be the most Mr. Darcy-coded man to have ever walked the earth – but Oliver is not all that interested in what the “Pride and Prejudice” author was bringing to the table. This, understandably, offends Agathe, who holds Jane Austen to the highest of standards. She shoots back at Oliver’s criticism, telling him that maybe the reason he finds the author tedious is because the women in the literature that he holds in high regard were written by men, and therefore are ideals. Jane Austen wrote women as they are – complex, human, and sometimes even boring. Just women.
Agathe is that very kind of protagonist – the romantic, slightly salty, a little strange, a little funny, girl at the heart of “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” Laura Piani’s sweet, oddball romantic comedy about a woman thwarted by the romantic expectations Jane Austen has thrust upon her. She’s searching for her Mr. Darcy in a world of Henry Crawfords, and honestly, who among us?
But, if Jane Austen does wreck all of our lives just a little bit, this movie believes in the power of shooting for that type of romance anyway. With strong performances and achingly lovely chemistry between the film’s two leads, “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” is about a woman learning to confront the world as it comes at her, and learning that perhaps, Jane Austen still has a lot to teach the modern heroine.
Agathe is married to her routine. She lives in Paris with her sister and nephew, and rides her bike everyday to the bookshop she works at with her best friend/maybe crush, Felix (Pablo Pauly). She longs for the romance of a Jane Austen novel, but rarely steps outside of her comfort zone – her parents died in a car crash years earlier, and she’s still dealing with the residual grief.
Felix pushes her to take the residency, sending her first couple of chapters without her permission and giving her a passionate kiss goodbye before he sends her off, finally breaking the will-they-won’t-they stand-off they’ve been locked in for years. Agathe arrives at the residency in high spirits, but with writer’s block, Felix not responding to her calls, and a crabby literature professor around every corner, she’s not sure she’ll survive.
The first word you think of when you see “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” is cozy. It’s a real warm hug of a movie, leaning hard into the Austen aesthetics of it all (the movie doesn’t do much by the way of class critique, but that’s perfectly fine in this case). It’s got the rustic splendor of the home, the light and the florals, the warmth of an old fireplace, and a few doddering elderly people to give the place character (As Todd, Oliver’s aging father and the head of the residency, Alan Fairbairn gives one of the film’s sweetest performances). And, of course, the complexities of love.
By that same token, what makes “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” stand out is its insistence on bringing more of a slapstick sensibility to that Regency era background. Agathe is a modern heroine through and through, particularly in the way that she can’t seem to catch a break. She falls down on hikes, she sticks her foot in her mouth more often than not, and she walks naked into rooms she thinks are bathrooms that are decidedly not. She’s the type of girl the llamas on the property spit in the face of (literally). But, she takes all her bad luck in stride, even as she spends her days staring at her computer and not typing a word. At one point, she says that one of the reasons she loves literature is because it reminds her that she’s only human – slowly moving along the path toward embracing life’s chaos.
It’s during this speech from Agathe that Oliver’s opinion of her starts to evolve. A romance lives and dies by the strength of its leads’ chemistry, and Rutherford and Anson have mastered the art of clever banter and longing stares. In particular, the film doles out Oliver’s virtues in a very Mr. Darcy way. He’s curmudgeonly at the start, and his stance on Jane Austen stands at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Agathe’s. But as the film goes on, little bits of information turn Agathe’s expectations of him on their head – he reads to his father at night. Of the applicants to the residency, he liked Agathe’s novel the best. When she says that a good book should remind you of your humanity, he looks at her as though she hung the moon.
Of course, Felix eventually interrupts the couple’s secluded little love fest. But with that storyline, Piani proves she is just as adept with platonic relationships as she is romantic. In a lesser movie, that love triangle would end in broken hearts or anger, but in “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” friendship is stronger than a momentary lapse in judgment.
There’s a ground quality to “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” that, for as witty and romantic as Jane Austen could be, always permeates her work. The romances might feel unattainable, but in reality, they’re just about women navigating the world around them in all its complexity, and coming out safely on the other side. Maybe with a little swooning along the way.