Movie Review | Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Photo – sonyclassics)

My credulity, not to mention my eardrums, having been recently tested by the derring-do of Tom Cruise in the recent Mission Impossible reboot, I sought solace in the just-opened film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Directed by Laura Piani – 2024
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan

It’s a modest, pleasant piece of counter-programming: a single and lonely bookseller (she works at Shakespeare and Company, no less), also a frustrated writer (she never finishes anything), wins on the strength of just two opening chapters, a residency at a Jane Austen Society retreat in England.

The heroine, played by an actress with the suitably bi-Channel name of Camille Rutherford—the movie’s use of French and English is split pretty much down the middle—arrives in England to an almost predictable set of complications: torn between two lovers and paralyzed by her own writer’s block, unable to deliver on the promise of those early pages while the other writers at the retreat type away incessantly.

It reminded me of the French movies I saw in the ’80s and ’90s, though Jane Austen Wrecked My Life turns out to be gentler than those earlier Gallic offerings. There are no existential choices or hard-earned truths. In fact, as the 98-minute film crossed the hour mark, I couldn’t help but think of Mission Impossible, playing just across the corridor. Granted, a movie with “Jane Austen” in the title isn’t likely to feature a protagonist free-falling thousands of feet only to emerge with a gimpy knee, but even so, the film’s conclusion renders its title not just ironic, but flat-out misleading.

Still, it’s mildly witty, touched with a bit of high culture, and scenically pleasant. You won’t leave the theater feeling like a few IQ points were shaken out of your head.

> Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Laemmle Glendale, and AMC The Americana at Brand 18 .