I’ll come clean right up front and say that this has never been my kind of movie. The archetype of the hopeless romantic loner somehow finding love with not just one but multiple people in the perfect and most idealistic way they could have imagined is the antithesis of how I would consider relatable feelings on love and also being alone. The antidote to this type of movie is stuff like Barbara Loden’s Wanda, John Cassavetes’ Opening Night, or Bette Gordon’s Variety, which take into consideration the messy untied strings of fitting in with the people around you and even if you do find a moment where it feels “right” and “comfortable” you’re immediately skeptical of it. That being said, it’s not like Laura Piani‘s Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a bad movie. It’s got a decent amount of writer’s catnip (and cinephile catnip via a surprising cameo from Frederick Wiseman) to counterbalance all of the tired and worn clichés of “my life is like a novel” modern rom-coms.
Dreams and the Inadequacy of Life
The central character, Agathe Robinson (Camille Robinson), hasn’t slept with a guy in two years and doesn’t know what she’s waiting for. She struggles with inadequacy in basically every part of her life, most prominently in love and writing. However the latter gives a light at the end of the tunnel when the first few pages of the manuscript, secretly submitted to the Jane Austen Residency by her bookstore coworker and flirt Félix (Pablo Pauly), impresses Todd (Alan Fairbairn) and Beth (Liz Crowther), who lead the residency and are descendant relatives of Jane Austen herself.
Agathe’s writer’s block is crippling, and we’re brought in to see the ways she self-sabotages her ability to write through a sense of idealism and ideas that come across as pretty relateable — for Agathe, it feels like the idea of being a writer, the notion of a story, is more important and comes more idealistic than when she puts pen to paper. Once her dreams and thoughts become manifest in words, everything suddenly feels inadequate. Thusly, she spends most of her time at the residency either drinking or reading famous romance novels.
What doesn’t help matters is that Todd and Beth’s son Oliver (Charlie Anson) catches her interest as a romantic partner, even though they get off on the wrong foot. The romance at the center of the story resembles Jane Austen’s Persuasion, where a previous interest with a past and a new interest struggle with each other in the mind of the protagonist. The film’s setting and elegant charm also tries as much as it can to ape other filmic adaptations of Austen novels.
Clichés Abound
There isn’t much here that isn’t predictable, and the comedic elements of the film come across as forced and silly. There are a few sequences where Agathe comes across a few llamas in the garden who spit in her face. She also pukes a lot, both from nervousness and her overindulgence in Chinese rice wine, which seems to be her drink of choice and is the inspiration of her romance novel, about a drawing of a sexy Asian man she sees at the bottom of a sake glass who comes to life.
The film doesn’t skimp on throwing out famous writer references left and write – Bukowski, Dickens, Shakespeare, Joyce, and Dumas, to name a few – and even has a sequence where literary academic theory, in conjunction with social politics, is hotly debated but only at a precursory level to illustrate one of the residents as being a conspicuous art-snob while Agathe is the reasonable, down-to-earth writer who thinks from the heart. This is a movie that isn’t really concerned with the art of writing at all, but the notions of how being a writer can be an emotionally torrid enterprise.
Conclusion
This is amusing when considering the title of the film, which suggests an obsession with the passion and elegance of an Austen romance renders the modern idealistic woman to have no options. Early in the film Agathe relents that she hates dating apps and says she was born in the wrong century. This doesn’t have much staying power because the movie essentially gives her everything she wants, just how she wants it. This leaves a movie that stops short of being engrossing and satisfying as a romance and instead, is fine with just being a light retreat for the writer-idealist.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life released in theaters in the U.S. on May 23, 2025.
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