Brief: A young Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) rebuffs the romantic advances of the young men (Laurence Fox, Leo Bill) in her neck of the woods to the delight of her father (James Cromwell) and the chagrin of her mother (Julie Walters). Her bother Henry (Joe Anderson) returns to the family’s home with his friend Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy) in tow, and Jane takes an immediate interest in this new specimen.
I wasn’t expecting this movie to be very good. When asked, I’ve described it as not very good. While I’ve heard the theory that Jane’s central romances were based on one of her own, there is little evidence to support it. The only evidence, in fact, suggests that the real Miss Austen lead a dull life. So I took this movie not as biography but as a supposal: suppose Jane had had a romance with a young Irishman destined to become the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
The thing is, though, if you are going to take idea for which there is precious little substantiation and suppose a good deal about it, don’t you think that you would suppose something far more interesting than that which co-writers Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams and director Julian Jarrold have come up?
They spend a good deal of time attempting to establish Jane as headstrong and independent and end up making her a selfish brat instead. Am I supposed to find it cheeky when she awakens her family at 6:15 on a Sunday morning playing the piano forte? Should I sympathize with her when she turns down a perfectly acceptable proposal from a kind young man who genuinely cares for her, knowing full well that doing so could condemn her family to a life of penury? When she criticizes her widowed cousin (Helen McCroy) for daring to find comfort in the arms of a younger man, where should my loyalty fall? With the far more delightful cousin, as it turns out.
It’s not that I don’t like Hathaway. I’ve always liked her. I thought it unfortunate that she got the short end of the stick when it came to the Brokeback Mountain praise, as she did excellent work, particularly in her last scene when she non-verbally conveys the heartbreak of discovering everything she always suspected about her husband to be true. It’s not that she’s bad here, but her attempts at an English accent make her voice sound mousier than ever, and she’s frequently lit and shot in such a way that her eyes look lopsided and her nose like a potato.
Emily noted afterward, and I agree, that cinematographer Eigil Bryld often shot his leads in the worst way possible. Anna Maxell Martin, as Jane’s sister Cassandra, consistently looked radiant, so why doesn’t he extend his leads the same courtesy?
In addition to initially making it difficult for Jane to capture the audience’s compassion, the appearance of Tom Lefroy on the scene does not seem to mark the beginning of a great, ill-fated romance. Instead, through Jarrold’s lens and through McAvoy’s performance, it seems that Tom intends to seduce a woman of good standing for sport. In such moments, Lefroy comes across not as a basis for Mr. Darcy, as the movie is so desperate to suggest, but as the inspiration behind rakes like Mr. Wickam or Mr. Willoughby. Jane’s instant and mildly unbelievable crush on him makes her more Lydia than Elizabeth Bennett.
Still, when the romance begins in earnest, when it comes to candlelit confessions of love and adoration, Hathaway and McAvoy pack a surprising punch, making Jane and Tom’s relationship as tender, tragic, and sexy as it ought to be. For that reason, it makes the inevitable end of their relationship all the more ridiculous (as if these two intelligent creatures cannot find a way out of their present difficulties) and the film’s coda even more difficult to swallow. I’m wary of giving it away, but suffice it to say that I expended most of my energies in trying not to blow a big, fat raspberry at the screen. B –
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