by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
B Rated PG 120 min
Anne Hathaway stars as a young Jane Austen in this quasi-biopic about Austen’s love affair with a roguish Irish lawyer, Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy). Lefroy served as romantic inspiration for Austen’s famous novels. Hathaway had to prove to the producers that she could handle a wide range of emotions. She got the part on the second audition after she showed a darker side of herself.
Clearly, in this difficult role, Hathaway proved that she can carry a picture with forceful confidence and convincing verve. McAvoy, whose work was memorable in The Last King of Scotland, portrays the happy-go-lucky lady’s man. Lefroy swept into Austen’s life like a hurricane, breaking down her reserve. He shows off his bare knuckle boxing prowess and Austen sees him naked on a skinny-dipping escapade. Of course, she pretends to dislike him, but she can’t resist his dangerous allure. In this repressed uptight culture of decorum and strict societal rules, Lefroy is a breath of fresh air for Austen.
Just as Austen is falling madly in love with Lefroy, her parents, who are simple farmers, are engineering an arranged marriage to the son of a wealthy land owner. In the mores of the time, if a woman had no dowry (assets) she was forced into a loveless marriage so she could be taken care of by a wealthy husband.
Austen had no intention of marrying this boring upper class snob. She was a visionary for her time and wanted to “live by the pen,” becoming a successful female novelist. In the mid-1700s, this was blasphemy–women didn’t work, much less have enough intelligence to write novels. So, Austen defied her parents and had a secret liaison with Lefroy. Ah yes, they kissed, which was a huge deal in those days. Lefroy had nothing tangible to offer Austen except his undying love. Austen was, for the first time, experiencing emotions that she had previously never felt. In retrospect, this steamy love affair was her research for her greatest works, which at that time, had not been written.
Deftly directed by Julian Jerrold, who crafted the film to show Austen’s inspiration for her greatest novels. By using some of Austen’s own dramatic elements, he brought the real character of Jane Austen to life. Her wild and reckless affair with Lefroy gave her the much-needed emotional references to write the literature that young women of all times could identify with. Through her works, Austen captured the thrill of a young woman’s first love and all its emotional ramifications.
In elaborate scenes of pomp and ceremony, as the gentlemen and ladies engaged in a primitive form of line dancing, they had brief times when they touched and could look dreamily into one another’s eyes. A come-hither look of love could spark a woman into heated desire that she dared not act on, lest she be deemed a harlot. So the young men consorted with the bar room trollops who took care of their lust and then the gentlemen courted the virginal young ladies of society as potential wives. Yes, it was stupid, but that was the morality of the time.
Austen’s love affair with Lefroy has its ups and downs as ultimately she has to make a decision. If she chooses Lefroy, she will alienate her family and have to leave the sanctity of the farm. But the other alternative is unthinkable to Austen. So, in a key scene, Austen meets Lefroy in the woods and they pledge their love for each other. She agrees to runaway with him and take her chances in London.
During the fateful carriage ride, she finds out something that changes her mind about their pending marriage. Thus, she experiences the heartbreak of love gone bad. Austen has been full circle and now she hunkers down to write what will become her masterworks that live on in each new generation of young women.
Jerrold’s slow pacing was intentional, but for the viewer it waxes teeth-grindingly tedious. However, the pace of living in that time was much slower than today’s world and Jerrold’s long shots and tick-tock pacing fits the story perfectly. This film should increase Hathaway’s stock in Hollywood considerably.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
