Becoming Jane

Released: March 29, 2007
Rated: PG
Director: Julian Jarrold
Screenwriters: Kevin Hood, Sarah Williams
Starring: James McAvoy, Anne Hathaway, Ian Richardson, James Cromwell, Maggie Smith
Running time: 116 minutes

Plot: The humble financial circumstances of Jane Austen’s (Hathaway) family are at odds with her ideal that marriage should issue from affection rather than from pecuniary interest. This creates tension when the penniless rascal Tom Lefroy (McAvoy) arrives in the Hampshire countryside and begins an illicit romance with Jane: will the pair face poverty and public opprobrium as they follow their hearts, or will sense prevail as they find wealthy spouses?

Like Austen herself — variously described as a genius of English literature, and as “a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman” (so Charlotte Brontë) — Becoming Jane will likely polarize viewers. Austen purists shall probably dismiss the film as speculative nonsense, an inexpert reshaping of the author’s life into the image of her own creatures. Those who are willing to treat it as a largely fictive romcom, however, shall enjoy a very diverting couple of hours.

The film appears to be set in the same kind of timeless utopia as Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility: the leads are too beautiful to be true; the sets are sumptuously lit; the costumes belong to no definable era, and are seemingly impervious to dirt, however much their wearers traipse through the shiny streets of town, or even the sodden Hampshire woodlands. Television (and Kinky Boots) director Jarrold handles well his wider frame, and we’re treated to some beautiful exteriors, as well as to some close-up details: a lingering look at the period transport; a disorienting contemplation of raindrops on a window.

The screenwriters are clearly fans of Austen’s work, and have fashioned for their Jane a life less ordinary than the one that history records for the enigmatic author. The superb support cast do the excellent job one might expect with their characters, who are slightly less grotesque caricatures of early 19th-century English society than those who populate Austen’s literary world. The film is carried, however, by Hathaway and McAvoy: ultimately the viewer’s assessment will rest on how they view this pair’s romance.

Hathaway I found surprisingly sympathetic, despite my incredulity that an American should be chosen for the rôle. Her Jane is witty and forthright, yet naïve enough to be vulnerable. In her insistence that she might “live by her pen”, however, she does fall victim to an anachronistic hint of proto-feminist ideology, which seems curiously out-of-place against the backdrop of the central conceit of both Austen’s novels and of the film itself, namely, that marriage to a wealthy man is a highly desirable state.

There’s no denying her chemistry with the deliciously charming McAvoy, but I for one found Lefroy a thoroughly unappealing character — much more Wickham than Darcy. We first encounter him in London, frequenting bars, boxing clubs, and bordellos, before he is ‘exiled’ to the country. His boorish contempt for the society he finds there, and not least for Jane herself (whom he seems to be seeking to corrupt, through both his salacious talk and his recommendation of the scandalous Tom Jones), hardly commends him to the audience’s affections. Indeed, I came to long for Jane to respond rather more favourably to the attentions of the dull — but wealthy and respectable — Mr Wisley (Laurence Fox). We learn belatedly of Lefroy’s commitment to his family, but this is not quite enough to redeem him.

Thankfully, however, history is on our side: we know that Austen will die single, happily better off without Lefroy, whatever the deceptions of her heart. This fortunate outcome is only slightly marred by the film’s endeavour at this point to reconnect with the historical Jane: it suggests that the painful experience of this failed romance became a wellspring for Austen’s prodigious insight and creativity. To object to such things, however, is to ask too much of the biopic genre: we know the history must be squeezed and snipped to fit a filmic arc and keep us entertained. Becoming Jane manages this quite admirably.

Verdict: An enjoyable, above-average romcom. Who wouldn’t want to spend a couple of hours with Hathaway and McAvoy in pretty costumes?