Jane Austen improves life

It is a truth universally acknowledged in rom-com movies that adding Jane Austen to the mix helps your project. Writer-director Laura Piani follows that truth using the title Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, even though the author actually helps main character Agathe, played by Camille Rutherford. A bookstore employee at Paris’s famed Shakespeare & Company, Agathe knows her Jane Austen, seeing herself as a variation of a spinster aunt from the story Persuasion. The Austen influences get closer when a co-worker sneakily gets approval for Agathe to attend a prestigious writers retreat where—guess what: she meets an annoying but devastatingly handsome man and attends a fancy dress ball where all the women wear empire gowns and dance to glorious waltz music. Taking a reassuring rather than surprising path, filmmaker Piani creates an enjoyable ode to the author, whose five novels repeatedly transform into screen projects that provide comfort, amusement, and a bit of insight about the desire for true love over mere companionship or lust. Star Rutherford makes an engaging heroine, and Downton Abbey’s Charlie Anson steps in to up his Austen creds after co-starring in Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies. That zombie comedy along with Piani’s movie once again serve as a reminder of that universal truth about the value of putting Jane Austen in a project.