5 reviews

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Phileas April 4, 2007

It isn't widely known, but Jane Austen was actually an American. The confusion over her nationality arose when an early biographer missed the "New" off "New England" when noting the place of her birth. There's also a popular misconception that Austen led a life circumscribed by the rigid social mores of her time. In fact, as "Becoming Jane" depicts, she was just as likely to attend a bare-fist fight as to be picking at her needlework. The truth is that, like most Americans, she was an outdoor type and, had it not been for the constraints of the time, she could have been a professional baseball player. As it was, she was forced to spend all her time indoors and had nothing else to do but write. In her frustration and genuis, she would bang on the piano in the morning and wake up everyone in the house.

Into this misery rides Tom LeFroy, an Irish American hero, who explains to Jane that writing is really just about reproduction. Like all modern women, Jane takes this all in her stride, along with the puerile innuendo. He's an ideal husband to be. He's not a stupid clergyman like the one that Cassandra (Jane's sister) was going to marry and who died doing something missionary. He's not English like Jane's brother Henry, who wants to go abroad and kill people. But is he a cad? Just as she is eloping with Tom, Jane finds a letter in his pocket from a girl. A girl!!. But it turns out to be from one of Tom's seventeen sisters, all of whom he is supporting. The sleazeball was planning to run off with Jane, thus losing his inheritance which his family was relying on. It must be the Irish in him. Our heroine shows no such weakness - she tells him to naff off and marry a red-headed Irish girl, and then goes back home to live the life of a maiden aunt. This can't be right, though. As anyone who saw the US ending to the 2005 Pride and Prejudice will know, we must have a happy, successful ending with knobs on. So Jane puts the whole thing into a book, gets the film rights and has the pick of half the directors in Hollywood. They, in their turn, use her to the full and the rest, as they say, is most definitely not history.

Too long. Dull and boring. Terrible casting, I couldn't agree less with 'cinegoer'. Julie Walters was terrible and Anne had hints of american in her accent (why oh why can't they cast an ENGLISH actress?). James McAvoy kept the whole thing together but the idea that Jane (A poor, plain daughter of a vicar) would even think of eloping is perposterous. It is also stupid to think that Jane's book Pride and Prejudice was completely based on her own experiences.

thing1 27 Mar 2007

Julie Walters was fabulous as Jane's mother, Laurence Fox also stood out and was convincing as the shy, domineered lad who wanted to marry Jane.

Anne Hathaway is very tall, I don't know if Jane Austen was particularly so but she did a fair job on the role.

I thought as Jane described balls (like the one at Netherfield in Pride And Prejudice) that she would
have been richer in monetary terms than she was portrayed to be (she must have known good balls and attended them in order to describe them).

The scenery was nice and Maggie Smith was suitably austere as Laurence Fox's relative.

cinemagoer 19 Mar 2007

‘You are not going to cry, are you,’ said my friend as we settled into the back row of the Phoenix. ‘I like to cry’, I said, ‘In fact’, I continued, as the first quintessentially English landscape rolled across the screen, ‘I’m crying already.’

At which point she threatened to leave, so I took my emotions under control. Sadly this was not difficult.

This film has been much compared to ‘Pride and Prejudice’. Surprise, surprise. We find a writer’s biography reflected in her fiction! In some ways I preferred this to that extraordinary blockbuster, in that it was more homely – the yard was dirtier, the pigs grunted more, the dancing at the village dance was altogether clumsier.

It did, however, resemble it in that Ann Hathaway, as Jane, was clearly a twenty-first century young woman reacting to eighteenth century problems – a fault that ran right through the Pride and Prejudice film. The same cannot be said of Julie Walters, who as Jane’s mother, took us straight into the sheer drudgery of digging potatoes and a new child every year. Her job was to show us the penalty of marrying for affection, and she did it very well, without losing any of her capacity for affection (so would she have been better off with the alternative? – this question was not asked). The idea of the film seems to have been that Jane, betrayed by her first love, is formed as a novelist – ‘becoming’the Jane whom we all admire. It also suggests that in some way this was second best: she is presented at the end as successful but dowdy, and really rather sad.

It would have been more interesting to ask if perhaps the general confusion that surrounded her early relationships did not, indeed, become (in the sense of being appropriate to) Jane. For someone as gifted as she, the choice she made was completely rational. Great use of the word ‘irony’ is made in the script, but one does feel it was lost on the directors.

Having said all that, we did go expecting entertainment rather than enlightenment, and that we certainly received. There is some excellent acting, and the scenery, as indicated above, is lovely. I was less impressed by the music.

Enjoy (but don’t expect to have a good cry).

Jessica Osborne 10 Mar 2007

Becoming Jane aspires to be a girl’s own pic, with shirts-off, pants-off moments and a feisty dose of feminine independence. Fictionalising a very brief moment in Jane Austen’s life, it suggests her flirtatious fling with a young Irishman was the source of her literary spring. Subtle as a brick, it misses virtually every beat.

Austen purists were alarmed at the thought of an American actress filling Jane’s tiny shoes. They needn’t have been. Anne Hathaway (the fashion ingénue in The Devil Wears Prada) does a decent job. She’s not the problem. But as an actor, English major and Austen fan, she should have known better.

Paying scant attention to Austen’s sparky creativity, Becoming Jane plays like a poor girl’s Pride & Prejudice, without the wit and wisdom. Confusing courtship with mating rites, the film paints Austen as emotionally inexperienced, in need of a rude awakening. Enter the raffish Tom Lefroy (the ubiquitous James McAvoy, Last King of Scotland, Starter for Ten). Breezing into Jane’s buttoned-up, small-scale world, Tom liberates the woman within. But neither family is pleased.

“Imagine everything most profligate and shocking” is Austen’s teasing take about her time with Tom, in a letter to her sister. But the film misses the irony and goes off the scale. An elopement? As if. Even the too-true drama of a young woman struggling against the restricting conventions of her day is dully done.

Saddest of all is the script. Clunky and caricatured, it hobbles feebly, lacking emotion, humour or credibility. Stood next to any Austen adaptation, its shortcomings are painfully evident. Proof, if ever it were needed, of Austen’s own genius for dialogue and the dynamics of detailed character. Pity they didn’t just film her letters.

Neither as quirky as Mansfield Park, nor as cocky as the recent Pride & Prejudice, Becoming Jane aims for a realism it doesn’t attain. Straining for effect, it tries to top TVs Darcy-in-the-lake moment with a brace of male bottoms by a river. Self-conscious camerawork highlights the too-modern tendency to get up close and personal to no good effect. And the period detail is more commonplace than chocolate box, which may disappoint some.

Becoming Jane tells us very little about Jane Austen - less than her letters, her novels or their big-screen adaptations. Austen’s life definitely deserves a film of its own. But Becoming Jane is definitely not it.

Disappointed of Oxford 4 Mar 2007