IT is a truth universally ac knowledged that hack critics must begin their reviews of Jane Austen works with the words “It is a truth universally acknowledged.” But I’ll skip the harrumphing about what they’ve gone and done to our Jane this time, as well as the dithering over Colin Firth.
Dear Reader, this imagining of what might have inspired Austen to write six novels casts that Minnie Mouse-eyed ingenue Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen, a headstrong girl from a warm but unwealthy family who is being nudged into marrying the local blockhead because he’s the nephew of the wealthy Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith, who has been playing this kind of character since approximately the time “Pride and Prejudice” was written).
The arrogant Irish law student Tom Lefroy (“Chronicles of Narnia” faun James McAvoy, a more polished Ewan McGregor) appears at the Austen house for a party while young Jane is proudly reading a prose poem in her sister’s honor. It lasts 30 minutes. Tom reacts with the cool Darcy-ish rudeness that has been proven to attract chicks for 200 years. During one of those proper English line dances that suggest aristocrats stopping by the honky-tonk, the two touch each other like hazardous waste but their glances are NC-17.
So: Austen’s life was just like “Pride and Prejudice,” and we settle into a cozy comedy of misunderstandings before the wedding bells clank? No. As all of her readers know, Austen died a spinster. Screenwriters Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams must change the formula of her novels to create a plausible, though imaginary, biopic. They can’t match the Austen wit, but I vouchsafe that in some ways they have improved on her.
The script, which jumps off from a couple of surviving letters in which Austen actually mentioned her new acquaintance Lefroy (“a very
gentleman-like, good-looking, pleasant young man”), takes some suprising turns. Instead of trying to make Austen’s life entertaining by pretending it was just like her work – as in the dull recent French movie “Moliére” – “Becoming Jane” has a more astute appreciation of how Austen, or any fiction writer, works. There’s a bit of stealing from life, lots of exaggeration, some wish fulfillment, mix-and-match character assembly.
Austen’s most famous line pops up in an unexpected way, and especially enticing is the idea that a key secondary character’s adventure in “Pride and Prejudice” could have been inspired by an uncharacteristic but conceivable experience of Austen’s. Although Jane’s parents – played by Julie Walters and James Cromwell – are replicas of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, they’re not exactly the same, and peripheral characters merely contain hints of broad comic creations such as Mr. Collins.
Unlike an Austen story, “Becoming Jane” doesn’t suffer from a predictable third act, and the characters aren’t quite so schematic; for instance, the wealthy young dullard who wants to marry Jane isn’t completely without insight. True obsessives will enjoy several allusions to details from the novels.
If the movie were as daring as Austen’s books were at the time, they could have lightened up on the female fantasy (Jane is shown slugging a ball at cricket, boldly initiating a kiss, flying an F-16, etc.) and smudged up its central character a bit. (“She was not generally considered handsome,” writes Austen biographer Claire Tomalin.) Jane is so above material considerations that the movie could be called The Angel Wears Empire Waists.
BECOMING JANE
***
Most congenial company.
Running time: 120 minutes. Rated PG- 13 (brief nudity, profanity). At the Lincoln Square, the Angelika, the Chelsea, others.