“I am not living in the right century,” bemoans Agathe Robinson (Camille Rutherford), the heroine of the eccentrically entertaining French romantic comedy “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” (“Jane Austen a gâché ma vie”). Feisty, single, and prone to melancholy, Agathe works in Paris’ legendary Shakespeare and Company bookstore. Austen’s novels have spoiled her. Disdaining dating apps and all the other paraphernalia of modern courtship rites, she lives with her sister and 6-year-old nephew and fiddles with writing a novel.
There have been so many Jane Austen-derived movies, including updated ones like “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “Clueless,” that initially I was wary of this one. The tendency to overdose on literary preciousness is ever present. But first-time writer-director Laura Piani doesn’t push the Austen parallels. And the twist here – Agathe is more of an Austen idolater than an Austen protagonist – is fresh. A Frenchwoman who writes in English, Agathe may compare herself to the independent but lonely Anne Elliot of “Persuasion,” but she’s no facsimile. Her spirit and her woes are all her own.
Does Agathe take her writing seriously? She reluctantly takes a composition class, where the teacher chastises her romantic prose for not being more in touch with the times.
Why We Wrote This
This year marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. An engaging new French film, “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” invokes the great writer and revels in romance and humanity.
Soon after, she finds herself at a restaurant fantasizing about the server, and the fantasy becomes grist for a more “personal” literary effort. She is reticent to go public with it, but, unbeknownst to her, Agathe’s flirty co-worker Félix (Pablo Pauly) enters an excerpt in a competition dedicated to Austen’s legacy. The winning payoff: a two-week residency in a gorgeous English countryside manor alongside other budding authors. The expectation is the surrounding bliss will inspire her.
But bliss isn’t exactly what Agathe requires to feed her muse. Neither is the presence of Oliver (Charlie Anson), a college literature instructor who lives on the estate with his parents. He is, I suppose, the Mr. Darcy of the piece. Except Oliver, a distant relative of Austen’s, thinks Austen is “overrated.” Agathe is aghast. She informs Oliver that Austen’s books are a part of her life.
The Agathe-Oliver contretemps isn’t very scintillating at first. Anson seems to be doing a stammering Hugh Grant impression, and, anyway, we can see where all this is heading. Despite Agathe’s half-hearted crush on Félix, who is part roué and part soulmate, it is Oliver with whom she ultimately experiences the requisite inexplicable spark.
What rescues the movie from being mere flimsy fun is Rutherford’s performance. She gives Agathe’s waywardness a gravity, a hint of darkness. A parental tragedy in Agathe’s past is supposed to explain some of this, but we don’t really need this backstory. Her sadness seems more existential. She sees her life passing her by. When she is by herself, she shimmies to pop songs, but around other people she often holds herself in. Rutherford makes Agathe appear at once hypervigilant and flummoxed, and perhaps this is the truest Austen touch in the movie. It recalls so many of her heroines.
We can understand, even if others don’t, why the gorgeous countryside does not inspire Agathe. A storm-tossed seaside, as it turns out, is more her style. Oliver comes to recognize this about her. It’s what ultimately bonds them. To fulfill herself as a writer, he tells her to “look for your ruins.”
We never really find out what kind of writer Agathe is, and we have to take it on faith that she’s gifted. It’s not much of a stretch. She thinks she suffers from impostor syndrome. She exclaims, “I am a genuine impostor.” But there probably isn’t a single good writer who hasn’t at times felt this way. And the ones who haven’t probably are impostors.
In any case, Agathe’s victory here is finally more than literary. She states early in the film that reading Austen “reminds me that I’m only human.” She starts out believing that only literature can straighten the disorder of her life and ends up embracing its glorious disarray.
Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic. “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” is rated R for language, some sexual content, and nudity. The film is in English and French, with English subtitles.
