JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE. Starring Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson and Annabelle Lengronne. Directed by Laura Piani. Rated M (Coarse language). 98 min.
The sub-titled film is written and directed by Laura Piani and is her first feature-length movie. It is directed as a modern account about wanting to find the kind of happiness Jane Austen writes about. The film has an authentic French look.
Agathe Robinson (Rutherford) is an aspiring novelist and she considers she has the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to attend a writers’ residency which explores the works of her favourite author, Austen. Agathe is a lonely young woman who is struggling with grief following the recent tragic loss of her parents. She works in a Shakespeare & Co bookshop in Paris, but is experiencing writer’s block. Her best friend, Felix (Pauly), arranges for her to be invited to the workshop in England, and she finds herself caught in a dilemma she must resolve: Is she a professional accomplished writer, or a person (she thinks) who isn’t able to experience genuinely romantic feelings? She longs for romance, and she has enrolled in the Residency Workshop to enjoy Jane Austen, but also to give consciously expressed meaning to the dilemmas she knows she is experiencing. She is character whose unpolished charm makes audiences feel that she is someone Jane Austen might well have written about.
The film that communicates the tensions depicted in Austen’s writings in interesting ways. It captures the escapism of romantic attachment by mixing it with realism, and human tensions are structured to provide the reality check. The film is modelled loosely on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It slips at times into slapstick humour that stays anchored to Austen. Oliver (Anson), appears early as a rival for Agathe’s affection. He is a handsome professor of contemporary literature, and Agathe initially thinks she doesn’t like him, but his character is reminiscent of Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and her affections turn around. In the movie, Agathe plans to return to Felix, but her plans are foiled by her burgeoning attraction to Oliver. Rutherford compellingly captures melancholy and lightheartedness in the role of Agathe, and it is not surprising that love of Oliver eventually wins.
The film has high appeal to anyone devoted to the works of Jane Austen. It asks whether the honesty of a good-natured man like Felix will triumph over the allure of a burgeoning attraction to a handsomely attractive man like Oliver. Such a question seems like a familiar Austen dilemma.
Hi Gloss Entertainment
Released 26 June 2025