Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Studio: Sony Photos Classics
Director: Laura Piani
Could 19, 2025
After we first meet Agathe Robinson, she’s dancing round her Paris bookshop, alone, singing alongside to a pop tune. She looks as if a free spirit—uninhibited and joyful. However when her coworker and finest buddy, Félix, teases her about her love life, a deeper layer emerges.
“What are you ready for?” he asks. “Mark Darcy? Afraid he’ll by no means present up?” “I’m not afraid,” Agathe says. “Positive, you might be. You’re frightened of struggling, amorous affairs, one-night stands. You don’t stay, you conceal.” “I’m not residing in the fitting century,” she declares.
In contrast to different movies centered round Jane Austen, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life doesn’t depend on tropes like a unusual ensemble mimicking Austen’s characters (The Jane Austen E book Membership), a theme-park-style retreat into Regency cosplay (Austenland), or magical realism à la Misplaced in Austen. As an alternative, this movie gives a quieter, extra grounded homage—a contemporary love letter to Austen’s themes. Its heroine, Agathe, is an aspiring creator clinging to the concept literature ought to include “that spark that doesn’t exist in actual life,” an area for personal fantasy that doesn’t demand whole escape, only a good story.
When Félix sneaks a peek at her unfinished manuscript—“a bit of bizarre such as you,” he teases—Agathe downplays it. However he secretly submits it to a Jane Austen-themed writing residency throughout the English Channel. Agathe is stuffed with doubt. “You’ve simply bought imposter syndrome,” Félix tells her. “No, I don’t. I’m a real imposter,” she replies. Then, in a sudden second of vulnerability and connection, Félix kisses her. She’s startled, however finally kisses him again earlier than setting off on her journey.
That journey introduces Oliver, a buttoned-up literature professor who additionally occurs to be Jane Austen’s great-great-great-great-nephew—and a skeptic of her cultural legacy. His mother and father run the Austen residency, and he’s instantly at odds with Agathe’s romantic idealism. Naturally, a will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic unfolds, one which Austen followers will acknowledge immediately.
There’s a colourful supporting solid on the residency, however in contrast to Austen’s novels, the movie doesn’t dwell a lot on them. We hear their writing in voiceovers, however Agathe largely isolates herself, not sure of her place and spiraling in self-doubt. Regardless of being in an area meant for creation, she hasn’t written a phrase. Her earlier remark to Félix—“I’m a real impostor”—proves all too true. She leaves him a clumsy voicemail, and his silence solely deepens her sense of disconnection, particularly as her emotions for Oliver develop extra difficult.
In fact, it wouldn’t be a Jane Austen-inspired story with no ball. When Félix lastly exhibits up, Agathe’s thrilled to have him as her dance accomplice, however her coronary heart is torn—Oliver, trying each bit the brooding bachelor of an Austen novel, remains to be very a lot on her thoughts.
In true Austen style, it’s the heroine’s selections—not simply romantic ones, however artistic and existential—that elevate the story past commonplace rom-com fare. Agathe’s lack of ability to put in writing turns into symbolic of her concern of failure, her unwillingness to leap. Finally, she confronts it.
“Have you ever ever had the sensation you had been made for one thing or somebody?” she asks Oliver. “That it was only a matter of luck or timing? […] I all the time thought situations needed to be excellent to put in writing, that I wanted to have skilled attention-grabbing issues. However that’s all bull——. No less than I do know that now.”
So, does Agathe get her Jane Austen comfortable ending? You’ll have to look at the movie to search out out. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life opens in theaters Could 23.
Writer ranking: 7.5/10
