PalCinema Review: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
May 22, 2025
FILM: JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE
DIRECTED BY: LAURA PIANI
STARRING: CAMILLE RUTHERFORD, PABLO PAULY, CHARLIE ANSON
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
Let’s face it, this film has a great title! It’s immediately intriguing. How exactly would a long deceased author wreck someone’s life?! Well, the film in question doesn’t really over emphasize the idea but it does suggest that the themes and romantic notions in Jane Austen’s work might very well have had an effect on her many readers over the past century.
Camille Rutherford stars as Agathe Robinson, who works in a book store (remember those?) and is a struggling writer. She is single and doesn’t want to meet guys online. She sees herself as Anne Elliot, an “old maid” who let life pass her by. Agathe has fantasies about a man in the Asian restaurant where she eats alone but seems apathetic about meeting anyone else. One of her best friends is a single man named Felix, but for some reason that hasn’t amounted to anything more than a friendship.
Even though her writing career hasn’t amounted to much either, Agathe gets invited to the Jane Austen Residency for a two week retreat where people are free to write and enjoy the estate’s beautiful grounds. Austen’s great, great, great grandnephew Oliver picks Agathe up and their relationship is immediately (surprise!) contentious, in true romantic comedy tradition. He even looks a bit like the king of rom com, Hugh Grant!
This isn’t though one of those laugh a minute films but it does offer a few great chuckles, including scenes featuring a couple associated with Oliver’s father who has dementia and recites poetry outside half naked. All of the characters are generally well-drawn, including one arrogant retreat participant who gets her due (thanks again to dad!) and another who practices the I Ching. None of them are over the top though. Rather they are what we might expect from writers at a writers’ retreat.
Generally, Agathe remains a bit low-key until she is confronted with an Austen-like choice between Oliver and Felix at a costume ball. It’s not clear how these characters learned the art of dance for an affair like this but then we are in a world inhabited by people who read about all the great ballroom scenes in British literature. There are references to other Austen novels such as Sense and Sensibility but any larger connections were a bit lost on me. (If you see some, let me know!)
The film features an engaging classical music score by composer Peter Von Poehl which fits well with the material and a beautiful production design by Agnes Sery. (The Austen house is set in England but was reportedly shot in France.)
In the end this is Agathe’s story. I don’t necessarily think her story suggests she has been “wrecked” by Austen. The original author may have put her in a place of inertia as an adult but the film doesn’t really emphasize any kind of obsession on Agathe’s part. She may have low self-esteem and prone to panic attacks, but she is generally an independent woman trying to figure out how to survive loneliness in the 21st Century.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life opens in Chicago this week. It will expand nationwide one week later.
Are you a Jane Austen fan? Has she wrecked your life?!
For the archive of PalCinema reviews, click here.
This is the second review I’ve seen of this film. I’m looking forward to watching it!