‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life’ Review: Camille Rutherford Tangos With Romance And Writer’s Block In Laura Piani’s Sharp Debut

From its title alone, you can tell that Laura Piani’s Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is no Pride & Prejudice. As in, it’s not exactly the dramatization of a (moving) picture-perfect romance in which two people go from enemies to potential lovers, nor where they traipse around picturesque manors in gowns, drink tea from sunup to sundown, and entertain throngs of esteemed guests in massive ballrooms stuffed to the gills with champagne and crumpets. There is romance aplenty, but nothing is perfect about it. A charming estate plays a sizable role in the film’s events, but its guests are welcome to wear jeans as they mill about the grounds. Coffee and wine are served; an evening out on the town is an option; the one time a ball-like reception is thrown, it’s treated as a special occasion, not a Thursday.

The fact that these elements are in play at all makes it certain that Piani’s romantic comedy will be placed in direct conversation with the legendary author’s work, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the writer-director’s debut feature is as much a clever, borderline satirical ode to Austen’s texts as it is inspired by them. In other words, there’s a reason that her film is called Jane Austen Wrecked My Life and not Jane Austen Is My Life, even if her main character makes it clear early on that she adores Austen’s novels and identifies most closely with Persuasion’s Anne Elliot. 

Agathe Robinson (Camille Rutherford) doesn’t quite live the life of an old maid, but she’s certainly an independent spirit whose world is confined to her duties at Paris’s Shakespeare and Company bookstore, as well as her own writing dreams, which are supported and encouraged by her close circle of confidants. Her sister is a single (but ready to mingle) mom, which makes the eternally-available Agathe the ideal aunt. And while her best friend and coworker, Félix (Pablo Pauly), tends to sleep around, his heart is in the right place. 

That’s precisely why it’s no surprise to learn that he is the one who secretly submitted Agathe’s newest story to writer’s retreat housed at Jane Austen’s old residence, a prospect she initially (and nervously) spurns due to a nagging case of imposter syndrome, only to accept once she realizes how ridiculous it would be to reject the opportunity to type where her favorite scribe once scrawled. There are a few (read: three) big problems, though: For starters, her writer’s block – a symptom of imposter syndrome – is nagging heavily, and causing immense frustration for a young woman whose opportunity to showcase her gifts has finally arrived. Then, there’s the fact that Felix kissed Agathe and expressed his feelings for her just moments before she had to go away for a month. (Naturally.) Finally, there’s Oliver (Charlie Anson), the stuck-up, devilishly handsome sourpuss who drives Agathe to the workshop, and also turns out to be Austen’s great-great-great-grandnephew. He’s the worst. He thinks his renowned relative is overrated. He even speaks French – the film is in both French and English, reflecting Agathe’s (and Rutherford’s) bilinguality – which allows him to understand what the workshop’s newest participant is saying when she mutters insults about him under her breath. 

But there’s something about him, something that intrigues and frustrates Agathe to no end, an intangible quality that keeps her fascination with his every utterance a constant presence in the film, providing Piani’s proceedings with a love triangle as its natural narrative engine. Yet the director and her star have far more on their mind than merely who Agathe will choose in the end. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a rom-com at its core, but it balances a plethora of tones, all of which are essential parts of its plot rather than throwaway elements that could theoretically make its characters more developed. Agathe deals with intense grief from a devastating tragedy; Oliver’s father, Todd (Alan Fairbairn), is ailing, which puts a great deal of pressure on his mother, Beth (Liz Crowther), to run the Austen estate. That our two principal characters, in particular, are faced with these individual conflicts in the midst of the film’s more mainstream qualities allows it to entirely clear the plane on which more basic, prototypical romantic fodder exists. 

It certainly helps that Rutherford’s performance grounds the film with a resonance that far too few heroines are afforded in today’s cinema. In an interview with Piani and Rutherford, the director told me that she especially enjoyed discovering Agathe as more of a real human than a mere character, something that Rutherford was instrumental in developing. Part of that is due to the star’s innate abilities as a physical performer – Agathe is an enthusiastic dancer, whether she’s fully clothed or in the nude; in one scene, she smells herself, only to discover that the odor is wretched; later, she’s drunk enough to condemn a suitor for not going down on her. Agathe, thanks to Rutherford’s interpretation of the character, is far from the sort of creation that Austen is famed for, and that’s all the more reason for Jane Austen Wrecked My Life to succeed on its own merits. After all, despite Austen’s influence and the film’s meta commentary on her work and the tropes that often appear within, the story at its center is about a woman whose life has been altered because of Jane Austen’s influence, not a life that has been written by Jane Austen.

Austen might have wrecked Agathe’s life in some ways, but the former also allows the latter to learn from the mistakes that her own protagonists have made in the process of paving her own road, both in the literary world and in the real one. Late in the film, Agathe comes to understand that both writing and love are not about operating in the ideal conditions, but about growth even when the environment appears to be barren. As one character notes, like weeds and plants, writing needs ruins to exist; “Look for your ruins,” they tell Agathe. Naturally, this is where she finds the most success, and in many ways, it’s what Jane Austen Wrecked My Life was doing all along: Exploring the perceived ruins of someone’s life and uncovering profound lessons as a result.