Jane Austen Book Club

A Film to Curl Up With: 'Jane Austen Book Club' Has Plenty of Character

Please don't call "The Jane Austen Book Club" a chick flick.

That label, tossed off to describe movies by, about and for women, is usually used in the pejorative sense, to dismiss by-the-numbers pieces of romantic, too-cute fluff. And, okay, "The Jane Austen Book Club" is all that, but it's so much more. Smart and self-aware, it's an unusually frothy showcase for some of Hollywood's finest actresses of a certain age.

And with its literate merging of good sense and passionate sensibility, it possesses all the pleasures of a guilty pleasure, just none of the guilt. It's a decadent, gooey hot fudge sundae of a movie, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. But after indulging in it, you won't hate yourself in the morning.

Based on Karen Joy Fowler's novel of the same title, "The Jane Austen Book Club" follows five Sacramento women (and a man whom one of them drags along) as they make their way through Austen's six novels, their own lives taking on resemblances to the beloved author's heady plots.

At first glance, these by turns flinty and flaky female characters seem more confected than fully realized: Kathy Baker plays the group's bohemian matriarch, Bernadette, who takes a spontaneous liking to a fragile young woman she meets in a movie line. That would be Prudie (Emily Blunt), a high school French teacher whose troubled marriage is thrown into sharp relief by her attraction to a dreamy-eyed senior named Trey (Kevin Zegers). "He looks at me like he's the spoon," she says at one point, "and I'm the dish of ice cream." As they say in France: Le sigh. (And as they say in America: Sister, I feel you.)

In short order, Bernadette has enlisted Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) and her daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace), as well as Sylvia's best friend Jocelyn ( Maria Bello), the most fiercely independent member of the group, at least romantically speaking (she prefers Rhodesian ridgebacks to people). When Jocelyn befriends a young science-fiction fan named Grigg (Hugh Dancy), a quorum of sorts is reached. And one by one, each character brings her or his perspective to bear on Austen's enduringly relevant narratives of love, loss, manners and stinging social satire.

It is a truth widely acknowledged that Austen has more than worn out her welcome on the big screen lately, her novels having been adapted with compulsive regularity and, most recently, her own love life being examined in the speculative romance "Becoming Jane." But even those filmgoers fed up with Austen-mania are encouraged to cross their own picket lines for "The Jane Austen Book Club," which, while indulging in unabashed Jane-love, maintains enough of a hold on contemporary reality, and a light enough touch with the literary allusions, to qualify as a nifty rom-com on its own terms.

A predilection for Austen is helpful but not required to enjoy a movie that derives as much observant humor from the indignities of modern life (which are wittily retailed in the opening montage) as from Austen's own densely layered texts. And like Austen herself, screenwriter Robin Swicord, who makes a promising directorial debut here, is all about subtext. At one point a character says disbelievingly of her ex: "He was wearing a jacket. With a zipper." The sartorial implications couldn't be clearer: He's gone completely insane.

Swicord keeps the story moving at such an efficient pace that by necessity, some characters never come fully into focus: Bernadette, the den mother, is relegated to wearing bold textiles and delivering wise zingers while young Allegra goes from sweet to sour for no apparent reason. The stories driving the movie belong to Jocelyn, whom Bello plays with peppery sensuality, and Prudie, the club's resident snob who, it turns out, has more than earned her myriad defenses. (Between this and her work in "The Devil Wears Prada," Blunt is becoming one of the best comedic actresses on screen, and certainly its most delicious bitter pill.)

Thanks to Bello and Blunt, "The Jane Austen Book Club" seems populated less by characters than people, who even when put through some unlikely paces emerge as somehow believable, especially in their self-deceptive foibles. The appeal of the women is more than matched by Dancy and Zegers, who are both delectable man-candy, sure, but are treated as more than just objects in a film that, in addition to its many charms, resists the temptation to male-bash. (Dancy nails an especially ingratiating scene when he arrives at the club's first meeting caffeinated out of his mind.)

It's to the credit of "The Jane Austen Book Club" that everyone -- male, female and canine -- is given their due, and dignity and their own version of a happy ending. If a film this funny, this sexy and this humanist qualifies as a chick flick, then it gives the genre a good name.

Trailer & Office Site: www.sonypictures.com.au/movies/janeaustenbookclub/index.html

By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 28, 2007