Becoming Jane

Becoming Jane (Julian Jarrold, 2007) - C

Too long, and too wishy-washy -- if you're going to invent an elaborate backstory for Jane Austen, then at least take some sort of stand, goddammit -- for all its feints toward finding poignancy in Austen's youth, the movie winds up neatly packaging everything and tying a bow around the result. In any event, giving her a passionate, if ultimately unfulfilled, youthful romance destroys the fundamental sadness of her story, which is that she embarked on a career writing about matters of the heart in which she herself had little involvement (the man portrayed here as her love interest apparently received two fleeting mentions in Austen's letters to her sister). The only meaningful path left to the film -- the notion that Austen loved, lost, and retreated to the worlds she created in her novels -- is equivocated into oblivion by the screenplay's compulsion to tie up every end, loose or not, and drag the characters kicking and screaming to strained, illogical happy endings. Some superficial pleasures remain, among them the intractable presence of Maggie Smith as a haughty noblewoman, but Ann Hathaway is tragically a lightweight among the accomplished cast, and the movie is too pointlessly glum and poker-faced to be chick-lit-style fun. Austen wouldn't have approved.