Stream It Or Skip It?

Naming your romantic comedy Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (now streaming on Netflix) inevitably saddles it with certain expectations. The big obvious one is the invocation of the Mighty Austen, whose pop-cultural relevancy has yet to wane after only about 200 years. The other is an implied boldness of tone; the word “wrecked” is just so, you know, severe. Perhaps first-time writer/director Laura Piani should be lauded for such ambition, but whether she fulfills the promise of a truth universally acknowledged (and all that) is the question.

The Gist: Agathe (Camille Rutherford) is stuck. She works at a book shop – a famous one, Shakespeare and Company, in Paris – and has the hair bun and bicycle and tote bag over her shoulder to prove it. She lives with her sister and nephew. She’s painfully single and hasn’t enjoyed a roll in the hay in two years. She wants to be a writer, but is criticized in workshops for her flimsy romances. She has a terrific relationship with her coworker Felix (Pablo Pauly) but isn’t sure if it should go outside the friend zone. She wears a constant expression of hangdog ennui. Felix asks if she’s afraid that her Mark Darcy will never show up. “I’m not living in the right century,” she moans. Her sister Mona voices what others maybe won’t: “I’m sick of your shit!” she exclaims.

Agathe table-for-ones at the Chinese restaurant and mostly chopsticks noodles into her mouth with signature glumness until she imagines a handsome naked Chinese man in the bottom of her sake cup; he comes to life and she envisions dancing with him, then goes home and finally gets somewhere with her novel. Then she’s stuck again. She laments that it’s just another of her projects destined to never be finished. But Felix sees something in it. Inspiration. A spark. Without telling her, he submits the incomplete story to the Jane Austen Registry, and gets her accepted into the Jane Austen Residency, a two-week stay at the Jane Austen Estate run by Jane Austen’s Living Relatives. Going would require Agathe to ride in a car, so she must get over a phobia stemming from a traumatic accident. Felix drives her to the ferry and helps her through a passenger-seat panic attack then kisses her before she boards. Romantically. More than just a platonic peck. 

While Agathe ponders if that meant something, her ride picks her up at the dock. His name is Oliver (Charlie Anson), he’s Jane Austen’s great-great-great-great nephew and he drives the type of semi-antique little Brit convertible that’s destined to break down in the middle of a forest where cell phone signals shall find no purchase, forcing them to not overcome their prickly attitudes toward each other and spend the night in the car. Uh oh. You know how these things tend to go. When they finally arrive at the Residency, Agathe’s greeted far more warmly by Oliver’s mother Beth (Liz Crowther), who runs the program, and his father Todd (Alan Fairbairn), who sometimes forgets to wear pants. Seeing an old man’s dong doesn’t inspire Agathe to overcome her writer’s block. She dithers and meanders and wanders the lovely grounds while the other writers get somewhere and work toward having something fresh to share at the conclusion of the retreat, when everyone performs a live reading. Meanwhile, does she feel something in the general direction of Oliver? She went forever with nothing and suddenly has two romantic prospects. Life! It’s such a pain.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Inspired by Woody Allen (it borrows the Windsor font), the Richard Curtis filmography (Anson borrows liberally and shamelessly from the Big Book of Hugh Grant Mannerisms) and the Bridget Jones films (it borrows the protagonist’s physical and emotional klutziness), Jane Austen Wrecked My Life enters the peripheral Austen pantheon alongside Austenland and The Jane Austen Book Club. 

Performance Worth Watching: Rutherford is a capable lead, but this brand of understated, oh-so-U.K. comedy seems like an odd fit for her.

Memorable Dialogue: Agathe and Oliver have a my-life-is-more-shit-than-yours competition:

Agathe: I’m very, very good at screwing up. The Palme d’Or of losers. The Turner Prize for drifting.

Oliver: I moved back home, but Dad walks around half-naked, forgets my name, and I can’t sleep without Tramadol.

Sex and Skin: Old man bum; Agathe wanders naked into Oliver’s room, mistaking it for the bathroom (as you do); a mild sex scene.

Our Take: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a character study whose protagonist is a generally awkward, maudlin woman who’s so gun-shy about, well, everything, her initial response to pretty much, well, everything, is “no.” She has to be talked into attending a retreat hosted on the hallowed ground of her all-time favorite author, and convinced to act on whatever’s happening with Felix, and is tentative about whatever’s happening with Oliver. What will drag her out of her rut? 

I kept waiting for Agathe, and therefore the movie, to come to life. She’s been “wrecked” by past tragedy and a romantic standard that’s perhaps too literary and idealized for real life, but what happens in the film is tepid and overly familiar – single-note supporting characters, blandly pretty scenery, overly calculated “quirky” comedy and a pair of romantic prospects who are shadows of characters, Felix an outline of a caddish type and Oliver a standoffish, assholish scowler with the fluttery blinking and stammering speech of a Hugh Grant facsimile. Agathe sees herself as an inevitable Austen spinster, but we never feel the urgency of her need to overcome her roadblocks and work through her foibles. And she’s supposed to yearn for one or both of these men? These men, whose charms seem to have fallen into the margins of this milquetoast screenplay?

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is sporadically almost funny, and just as infuriatingly almost dramatically involving. The comedy is shrugworthy – a llama spits on Agathe, Oliver inadvertently sees her naked, she accidentally sends a racy text to Felix. Mildness on a dry, flat landscape, as far as the eye can see. There’s little insight into the joys and pains of writing or the struggles of single people approaching middle age; it all boils down to what she feels and for whom, as well as what we feel about this fork in the road. Which ultimately isn’t much.

Our Call: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life may be nice enough for Austenites submerged in the literature, but for the rest of us, its rampant temperance renders it unengaging. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.