What would Jane Austen think of "The Jane Austen Book Club?" Ever the satirist of romantic pretensions, would she wrinkle her nose at the film's goofy sentimentality? Or would she take one look at the parade of adorably lovelorn characters and smile with affectionate solidarity? More likely, she would recognize the film as an elaborate form of flattery. Made by lovers of Jane Austen, "The Jane Austen Book Club" is as much an admiring tribute to the author as it is a delightful dramatization of her enduring fan base.
The members of the film's titular club all seem to have wandered out of some unpublished Jane Austen novel and into present-day Los Angeles. Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) is an attractive middle-aged mom whose husband (Jimmy Smits) has recently abandoned her for the office slut; she spends a lot of the film weeping into the pages of Victorian novels. Her daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace) is a skydiving lesbian who adorns her body with girl-power bumper stickers -- think Elizabeth Bennet with a sapphic twist.
Sylvia's friend Bernadette (Kathy Baker) is one of those endearing grandmotherly types who wears lavender-framed glasses and never lets go of her knitting needles. Jocelyn (Maria Bello) is a prototypical cat lady, only with dogs. Most Austen-esque of all is Prudie (Emily Blunt), a repressed high school teacher unhappily married to a meathead (Marc Blucas). She's the type who buys sexy lingerie to wear underneath her high-necked schoolmarm uniform.
The plot of "The Jane Austen Book Club" opens inauspiciously with the death of Jocelyn's favorite rottweiler. To console her grieving friend, Bernadette announces the formation of the Jane Austen Book Club as a sort of literary therapy. Since there are six Austen novels and only five club members, the women are obliged to bring aboard Grigg (Hugh Dancy), a science-fiction nerd that Jocelyn recruits at a bar in the hopes of finding a potential rebound guy for the recently-divorced Sylvia.
Dancy does a passable job at concealing his British accent, but the actor's cherubic face has the unmistakable look of an Elizabethan heartthrob; the fact that his last name is one letter away from Darcy is an eerily prescient coincidence.
Before long, "The Jane Austen Book Club" falls in step with a basic formula; the members of the club meet every few weeks to discuss one of Austen's novels, then go off to have all manner of amorous misadventures in the meantime (lest we forget which book we're on, each new title is scrawled across the screen in florid purple lettering). Fans of Austen will not have difficulty recognizing references to their favorite novels amidst the ensuing romantic tumult. Something tells me that the parallels between Austen's novels and the film's interlocking narratives is less than accidental; it's as though, rather than go through the motions of an umpteenth Austen adaptation, the filmmakers elected instead to consolidate the author's six-volume canon into a single movie. With lesbian skydiving.
The narrative of "The Jane Austen Book Club" is repetitive. The screenplay is painfully obvious. The ending is mush. But who am I kidding? I love this movie.
Yes, "The Jane Austen Book Club" is predictable, but the film executes its formula with sophisticated charm. John Toon's warm-toned cinematography endows the story with an inviting visual allure, and director Robin Swicord displays a knack for pacing and character development that Austen herself would be proud of. I initially groaned at the litany of predictable caricatures, only to smile appreciatively as those same caricatures blossomed into believable people.
At this point in my review, I have paused at my keyboard for several minutes, trying to come up with something that will convince my male readers that "The Jane Austen Book Club" may be worth their time. That is, of course, assuming there are any guys out there who have managed to make it past my opening paragraph.
For those brave few who have, listen up: this is not a movie about women, but about people. There's a touching universality to the film's lovesick band of misfits that transcends gender. I saw the movie alone, in at a screening where my only companions were a couple that sat behind me making out the entire time. If I can emerge from that experience with my testicles intact, so can you.
Is "The Jane Austen Book Club" a chick flick? I suppose so. Is it also a fun, witty and insightful film that can appreciated by non-chicks? Absolutely. And if that's still not enough to convince my fellow males, let me put it this way: you'll get to see Emily Blunt in her underwear.
