Jane Austen Wrecked My Life – a whimsical and heart-warming romcom (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 13 June)

Laura Piani’s new film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Jane Austen a gâché ma vie) is a swooning romcom that diligently pays homage to the works of Jane Austen. By day, Agathe works in the English-language bookshop Shakespeare and Company in Paris. By night, she’s a left-handed author who has moments of vivid inspiration but mostly struggles to overcome her writer’s block. A colleague applies on her behalf to attend a Jane Austen writing retreat in England.  (Attendees of writing retreats will either feel seen or misrepresented!)

Setting a film in a literary environment is a great move even before Piani’s script for her feature debut picks up on so many tropes from Austen’s oeuvre: unrequited love and a friend who wants to become a lover, a man travelling long distances to make a big statement to a woman, sparky dislike turning to sparky amour … not to mention an opportunity to wear a corset, a Regency ball, and a lot of self-loathing. There’s even a modern reinvention of travelling by horse and carriage. Not sure that the llamas have a Georgian parallel.

Don’t panic if you’re not familiar with a detailed knowledge of Jane Austen. Agathe’s encyclopaedic familiarity with Austen quotes and phrases is used very gently. Camille Rutherford reaches into her character’s backstory as the survivor of a fatal car crash to create a sense of vulnerability that explains her sadness. The self-described “old maid” is prone to accidents that charm the audience. Her French friend (Félix, played by Pablo Pauly) is endearing until we realise he’d sleep with his reflection and lacks any form of commitment. Her needling English chap (Oliver, played by Charlie Anson) is modelled on Hugh Grant, at first snobbish, later a fellow drifter on Agathe’s wavelength.

While neither suitor induces a sense of panic or destiny, in a world that is tearing itself apart, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a whimsical and heart-warming romcom. It’s being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 13 June.

 

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