BEFORE: Great news, I've figured out a way to get from my Easter film to "Palm Springs", a film that I was unable to fit into the romance chain, but is also another time-loop film. I just made it my next target, after Easter, and made a little flowchart with the circles and arrows and laid out all the possible links, and I can get there in 6 or 7 steps. This increases my planned unbroken chain until April 11 or so, and in a few weeks maybe I'll just pick another film I want to see as the next target and go from there. It's a long way from April 11 to Mother's Day (or the release of "Black Widow" in theaters, whichever) so pretty much any target in-between should work. This system is working out for me so far this year - pick a film I've been itching to get to, like "Parasite" or "Warrior" or the entire Bergman filmography, and then just work out how to get there. It's the initial identifying of the target, asking myself, "What do I WANT to watch?" that's the tough part for me. But once I have it, all the rest is just details to be worked out - as long as I believe there must be a path to the next target, then I just have to find it.
Anne Hathaway carries over from "The Hustle". Happy Birthday to actress Anna Maxwell Martin, appearing in today's film as Cassandra Austen. It's also the birthday of Hallie Quinn Brown (1849), African-American educator, writer and activist, who founded the Colored Woman's League of Washington DC and spoke at the Republican (!!) National Convention in 1924. Also Lillian Wald (1867) who supported American community nursing, campaigned for suffrage and racial integration, founded the Henry Street Settlement and was involved in the formation of the NAACP. And Clare Booth Luce (born in 1903), American politician, ambassador to Italy, and author of the 1936 play "The Women", with an all-female cast. Don't forget Kim Campbell (born in 1943), the 19th Prime Minister of Canada, and the only woman to hold that position.
THE PLOT: A biographical portrait of a pre-fame Jane Austen and her romance with a young Irishman.
AFTER: Well, it's the third Jane Austen-related film I've watched this season, first came "The Jane Austen Book Club" and then the most recent filmed version of her novel "Emma", now it's a bio-pic about the author herself. Perfect for Women's History Month, right? And also it's therefore fitting that watching a film about Austen gets me one step closer to "Wonder Woman 1984" - but I suppose you're just going to have to trust me that it does, somehow. Just give me about two weeks to get there.
The film is primarily concerned with Jane before she was a successful author, as the child of a preacher/farmer who faced the common (I'm guessing) problem of how to become successful in life, when burdened with femininity, and being constantly told that women couldn't own property, hold down a job, or support themselves - and therefore most didn't even try, so really it was a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way. The only thing a woman could do was to marry well, and Austen here gets a proposal from Mr. Wisley, who is the caretaker for his rich aunt and therefore due to inherit her fortune some happy/sad day. The only problem is that Jane doesn't care for him, he's not exactly an exciting guy, not like the mysterious Mr. Lefroy from Ireland, who is not only a failing lawyer, but also engages in bare-knuckle boxing (the new fad in the U.K., it was like the MMA of its time.)
Tom Lefroy gets off on the wrong foot with Jane, by criticizing her writing, which she reads at a social gathering he attends. It's quite possible that Lefroy had some valid points, after all Austen's family were the only people familiar with her work at the time, and they were probably much less likely to give her valid criticism. Lefroy challenged her, which is a good thing, because her world needed a little rockin', if you know what I mean. But this sets up a love triangle worthy of one of Jane's own future novels, one man who has proposed marriage that Jane feels no affection for, and another she's enthralled with who's just not the marrying kind, and also has no money set aside for marriage.
Over time, they fall in love (or so they believe, because Jane's never been in love before - so HOW DOES SHE KNOW?) and they travel with Jane's widowed cousin, who's a French countess, to see the judge who is also Tom's uncle, in hopes of getting him to approve marriage, and maybe come up with a little bit of cash to help support them for a while. But someone mysteriously sends a letter to the judge to inform him that Jane Austen's family is poor, and the deal is off. One good thing, though - while traveling to London and staying with the judge, Jane's inspired to write the first draft of what will one day become "Pride and Prejudice" (which is all about young girls marrying rich men to help support their family, get it?)
Tom tells Jane he can't marry her, but then after returning home she learns that he's become engaged to another woman, and this was arranged by his family. What's the problem here, don't young renegade bad-boy lawyers make any money on their own? Jane accepts the marriage proposal of Mr. Wisley, because it's the best deal she's going to get, but then when Tom and Jane next see each other, they fall back together. I get it, they're both engaged to others, so getting back together is just so wrong that it feels right - so they make plans to elope and catch the next carriage back to Ireland. But when Jane finds a letter that details how much of his money he sends back to his mother, she realizes that she can't marry him, because he's stuck financially, supporting his parents. She's in the same boat, with hopes of supporting her own parents through her novels, so she heads on back home.
Jane gets one last proposal, but that's basically a non-starter - she remains unmarried by choice, which would only be a problem if she were an author who chose to focus on love and romance and people getting engaged and married. Oh, wait. This is a major problem with Austen for me, are people supposed to read her books and take her storylines seriously, when she had no personal experience with marriage, except for broken proposals and a failed elopement? Don't they always say, "Write what you know"? Jeez, romance novelist Jackie Collins was married twice and engaged a third time, that's somebody that probably knows a bit more about relationships than Jane Austen did. Austen writing about romance was a bit like the "MyPillow" guy, who was a former drug addict, taking part in influencing politics last year - stay in your damn lane.
The truth is that there are many details of Austen's life which are unknown, so this film is probably largely speculative. There is a record of Mr. Lefroy visiting town in late 1795 or early 1796, and at least according to Wikipedia, after he left town, Austen never saw him again. But that's not enough closure for a Hollywood film, so this movie has Lefroy visiting years later, with a teenage daughter who's a big fan of "Pride and Prejudice". However, Jane at this point has taken to not doing readings in public, and in fact trying her best to remain anonymous - which is strange, because she put her name on the popular book, and everybody seems to know how to find her, so that's not really being very anonymous, is it? (Ah, the IMDB points out that this is a movie GOOF, Austen's works were published without her name on them during her lifetime, so she did remain anonymous, more or less, AT THE TIME. Her name was added to her novels after she died in 1817.)
Also starring James McAvoy (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Julie Walters (last seen in "Billy Elliot"), James Cromwell (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Maggie Smith (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes"), Lucy Cohu, Laurence Fox (last seen in "The Professor and the Madman"), Joe Anderson (last seen in "Horns"), Ian Richardson (last seen in "102 Dalmatians"), Sophie Vavasseur, Anna Maxwell Martin (last seen in "Philomena"), Leo Bill (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Jessica Ashworth, Eleanor Methven (last seen in "The Boxer"), Helen McCrory (last heard in "Loving Vincent"), Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (last heard in "Avengers: Endgame"), Michael James Ford, Elaine Murphy, Gina Costigan, Chris McHallem, Michael Patric.
RATING: 5 out of 10 powdered wigs
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