Aug. 07, 2007 - Issue #616: “If you see a gringo with a camera, shoot him!”

A period romance in the Romantic Period

Becoming Jane makes the most out of its time, if not the titular author jane austen

Historical romances have an unfair advantage. Bygone eras had greater hurdles, with lovers divided by treacherous geography, kept apart by Montague-and-Capulet family feuds, damned by the religion of their birth, plagued and poxed by diseases. So a film like Becoming Jane, if it steeps us in its English historical period like steaming tea in a Royal Worcester porcelain cup, can offer a stirring romance.

Director Julian Jarrold elegantly captures the look of love here. The opening is a deft series of long shots and close-ups, establishing the rustic seclusion of a modest family home in Hampshire and the fits and starts of one young enthusiastic writer working away inside. Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) is a clergyman’s daughter who soon finds herself falling for Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy), an Irishman studying law in London who’s been sentenced to a short stay with his country relatives by his uncle, a judge (Ian Richardson). Hathaway and McAvoy, an excellent actor, sustain a strong chemistry with the same glances and subtle play of body language that brim with meaning in Austen’s books.

But Becoming Jane is rarely Becoming Austen. After the opening sequence, we’re only shown her writing after she meets gothic novelist Anne Radcliffe (who hints at the personal cost of being an “authoress” in early 1800s England) and then as she begins Pride and Prejudice. Her profound wit flashes in some duels with Lefroy and her eloquent defence of irony to Lefroy’s stodgy uncle, but her literary development is muted. Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith), when told Austen is writing, asks, “Can anything be done about it?” Not enough here—Austen’s fiercely independent writing voice is even muted in the epilogue, which puts her fresh work second to old love. Writers Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams have taken Austen’s mentions in two letters of the Lefroy she briefly flirted with, suggesting she filtered a tempest of heartbreak and passion through her imagination and poured it onto the pages of her first novel. But, like the Darcy-esque Lefroy’s introduction of Tom Jones or street-brawling to Jane, the film shows an Austen too often not just in thrall, but in debt to the male world.

Yet Becoming Jane never purports to be much more than romantic drama, and that’s crafted finely. The wall between lovers, as in Austen’s books, is money. Marriage was about inheriting property from the husband’s family, and Jane’s hard-up parents can’t support their single daughters. One scene crackles with the hardship of poverty—Jane’s mother (Julie Walters), furious at Jane’s refusal of a suitor, snaps, “Affection is desirable; money is absolutely indispensable.” Wavering camera shots reveal the rawness of private grief and heartbreak in stark contrast to the polite public displays of the Regency Era (captured by elegant tracking shots). The performances throb with gentle humour, but also subtlety.

While Becoming Jane is too much of a prologue to the writing Austen, it is an impeccably crafted imagining of a young woman seeking love at a time when women were, as Jane tells Cassandra, so often “better than their circumstances.” V

Opening Fri, Aug 10
Becoming Jane
Directed by Julian Jarrold
Written by Kevin Hood, Sarah Williams
Starring Anne Hathaway, James Mcavoy

New comments for this entry have been turned off and any existing ones are hidden. We apologize for any inconvenience.