Delightful French films, part 1: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Agathe (Camille Rutherford) failing to make progress on her novel in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Image source: Film Obsessive
The French seem to do certain things better than almost anyone else: food, wine, women's fashion, perfume, not to mention political protests and universal healthcare. To this list we can add charming romantic comedies. We recently saw two excellent French films at the recommendation of dear friends; neither is flawless, but both are delightful.
Agathe (Camille Rutherford) reading outside Shakespeare and Company, Paris. Image source: Cinemaclock.com
Indeed, part of the message of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Jane Austen a gâché ma vie, 2024) is that nothing is, or should be, flawless, because then it would not be real. (By the way, the movie is not based on Beth Patillo's 2009 novel Jane Austen Ruined My Life; instead, it's an original film written and directed by Laura Piani.)
Agathe (Camille Rutherford) is a huge Jane Austen fan who works in the legendary Paris literary mecca Shakespeare and Company; somehow in the film the bookstore is never mobbed with tourists as it is in real life. Inspired by her love of Austen's writing, Agathe wants to follow in her footsteps and become a novelist. But as with many another would-be writer, she finds it almost impossible to actually put words to paper; she's too daunted by her model and too afraid of proving her lack of talent to herself.
Then her friend and coworker Félix (Pablo Pauly) finds the opening pages of a novel that Agathe has recently begun but made little progress on. Unbeknownst to Agathe, Félix applies on her behalf to a writing retreat, and sends her unfinished pages as a sample. To Agathe's astonishment she is awarded a two-week Jane Austen Residency on an English country estate owned by descendants of the Austen family. Filled with trepidation, but with Félix's encouragement/insistence, Agathe decides to go.
On her arrival on the other side of the channel Agathe is met by Oliver (Charlie Anson). The son of the couple who run the residency and a professor of literature, Oliver has been tasked with driving Agathe to the house.
Oliver (Charlie Anson) and Agathe (Camille Rutherford). Image source: RogerEbert.com
As the journey begins he immediately gets on her wrong side. Despite being a descendant of the Austens, Oliver tells her that he doesn't think much of great-great-great-great Aunt Jane's novels: who cares which rich man the heroine marries? Agathe is angered by his dismissal of Austen's work, finding him arrogant and far too sure of his ill-informed opinions. Austen's novels, she tells him, were the first to depict women as fully realized human beings with both virtues and flaws, rather than as idealized beings or symbols.
(Brief aside: It's not quite true that Austen was the first to depict flawed but sympathetic women in fiction, as long-time readers of this blog know well. See posts on Fanny Burney, Charlotte Smith and Maria Edgeworth as some earlier examples; Burney and Edgeworth novels are mentioned (along with those by Ann Radcliffe) in Northanger Abbey, and the title of Pride and Prejudice may have been suggested to Austen by novels of Smith or Burney.)
We may begin to suspect that Oliver's resemblance to a certain handsome but haughty Austen character means that he and Agathe are meant to be together, once he allows himself to be a little more open and vulnerable. But the ardent yet unreliable Félix presents a complication, especially when he shows up at the residency's concluding Regency costume ball to dance with (and seduce?) Agathe.
Félix (Pablo Pauly) surprises Agathe (Camille Rutherford) at the Regency costume ball. Image source: CultureFly.com
But does Félix take love seriously enough? Will Oliver recognize that he has a few things still to learn, and not only about Jane Austen? And will Agathe choose to embrace romance, or will she give herself the space to make progress on her writing and sort out her feelings?
Had Piani's movie been only funny, literate, well-written and -acted, with an appealing heroine facing a difficult romantic dilemma, it would have been entertaining enough (though, of course, not flawless). But the final scenes of the film are extraordinary.
Back at Shakespeare and Company, Agathe organizes a reading by the San Francisco poet Jack Hirschman.
Poet Jack Hirschman at Caffe Trieste, San Francisco, 2016. Photo credit: Christopher Michel. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Hirschman is not a fictional character, although he passed away before the film was made and is portrayed by the renowned director Frederick Wiseman (!). (Wiseman himself passed away in February of this year, at age 96.) I encountered Hirschman on the page for the first time because he edited (and did much of the translation for) the Artaud Anthology published by San Francisco's City Lights Books. And I encountered him in person because he frequented the Caffe Trieste in North Beach, just a few blocks away from City Lights, where he could often be found distributing his drawings for free to the other customers.
I was astonished to see Hirschman appear as a character at the dénouement of a French romantic comedy. Hirschman (Wiseman) recites the poem "Path," which urges the reader or auditor to "learn sincerity of intent by letting/life enter," perhaps the lesson that Agathe (and we) have needed reminding of all along.
Path, by Jack Hirschman
Go to your broken heart.
If you think you don’t have one, get one.
To get one, be sincere.
Learn sincerity of intent by letting
life enter because you're helpless, really,
to do otherwise.
Even as you try escaping, let it take you
and tear you open
like a letter sent
like a sentence inside
you've waited for all your life
though you’ve committed nothing.
Let it send you up.
Let it break you, heart.
Broken-heartedness is the beginning
of all real reception.
The ear of humility hears beyond the gates.
See the gates opening.
Feel your hands going akimbo on your hips,
your mouth opening like a womb
giving birth to your voice for the first time.
Go singing whirling into the glory
of being ecstatically simple.
Write the poem.
Next time: The Crime is Mine
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