How can you not adore a film whose protagonist works in a bookstore?
And not just any bookstore. Agathe (Camille Rutherford) is one of several employees at France’s fabled Shakespeare & Co. (an actual English-language bookstore opened in 1951, on Paris’ Left Bank). She’s introduced while filing books late one evening, dancing buoyantly to Marie Modiano’s sparkling cover of Peter von Poehl’s “Cry to Me.”
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| During a Jane Austen-style costume ball suffused with Regency-era atmosphere, Agathe (Camille Rutherford) finds herself unexpectedly attracted to the initially stuffy Oliver (Charlie Anson) |
Agathe adores the works of Jane Austen, and is herself a would-be author ... but this, too, is a frustration. Each new effort at a novel yields a few unpromising chapters, and then she stalls.
Félix (Pablo Pauly), her best friend and co-worker, is her polar opposite: bold, outgoing and cheerfully promiscuous. He and Agathe flirt constantly, but without significance.
“I’m not into Uber sex,” she laments, and — given that her blueprint for romance is found solely within the pages of Austen’s novels — adds that she’s “living in the wrong century.” She compares herself to Anne Elliot, from Austen’s Persuasion, who has “let life pass her by.”
Then, one day, literary inspiration strikes from the bottom of a cup of saké. She pounds out a few chapters, but then the well again goes dry. The difference, this time, is that Félix deems those first chapters very promising; he wants to know what happens next ... but Agathe is stuck.
Without her knowledge, Félix sends those chapters to England’s Jane Austen Residency, an exclusive annual writers’ workshop. Agathe is accepted, which throws her into a panic; she certainly can’t bicycle that far. Félix won’t let her balk; he hustles her onto a ferry, and she’s met at the other end by the very British Oliver (Charlie Anson), Jane Austen’s great-great-great-nephew, who has been sent to collect her.
Which involves a long drive in his very small sports car.
As first encounters go, it’s a disaster. Among his many (apparent) failings, Oliver insists that his great-great-great aunt is “overrated.”
Once at the residency, Agathe is greeted by Oliver’s parents, Beth (Liz Crowther) and Todd (Alan Fairbairn). The former is gracious and bubbly; the latter, sliding into dementia, has a habit of quoting poetry in their lavish estate’s garden ... sans pants.
The residency will last a fortnight, during which the attendees are encouraged to write whenever and wherever — within the estate, or on its grounds — the Muse strikes. The workshop will conclude with a lavish, Regency-era ball, after which the writers will read portions of their work aloud.
They’re a tiny group. The pompous Olympia (Lola Peploe) arrogantly dismisses Agathe’s belief that “some books become part of our lives,” instead insisting that books aren’t worth a damn unless they elevate consciousness, incite political upheaval, or change the world in some other way. The quieter Chéryl (Annabelle Lengronne) is more accommodating.
As the days pass, Agathe frequently sees Olympia and Chéryl hard at work ... while she stares forlornly at her laptop screen.
All of this is cheeky backdrop, of course, to writer/director Laura Piani’s affectionate modern valentine to Austen. It’s a bold move, since we’ve seen several such pastiches since Helen Fielding’s 1996 novel, Bridget Jones’s Diary, spawned four films; and since the BBC’s miniseries adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and the big-screen handling of Sense and Sensibility — both in 1995 — generated a tsunami of All Things Austen.
Piani doesn’t swing for the fences, which is to her film’s advantage. This is a modest romantic triangle, with Agathe torn between the initially haughty Oliver, and the possibility that she may be taking Félix for granted. (Viewers well-versed in Austenalia will immediately perceive which of the two feels like Elizabeth Bennet’s Mr. Darcy.)
Everything comes to a head during the aforementioned ball, when Agathe finds herself dancing with both Oliver and the visiting Félix ... and the sexual tension smolders.
Rutherford is an extremely busy actress probably best known — on our shores — for 2013’s Blue Is the Warmest Colorand 2023’s Anatomy of a Fall. Her handling of Agathe is delicate: a clumsy, wistful woman aware of her need to overcome fragility and fear, but who hasn’t yet figured out the mental and/or emotional trigger that will allow her actual personality to re-emerge.
And, hopefully, cure her writer’s block.
When at peace — as during the film’s opening scenes, in the bookstore — Rutherford is happy and uninhibited. If only she could figure out people better...
Pauly’s Félix is jovial and free-spirited. Whereas Agathe takes things too seriously, he doesn’t take them seriously enough. Even so, he’s a genuinely devoted BFF. Anson’s Oliver is more reserved, but there’s a sparkle in his eye, which gets more intense as he studies Agathe, and learns more about her.
Crowther’s Beth is delightful: warm, loving and solicitous, like the world’s best grandmother. Fairbairn’s depiction of Todd’s slide into senility is persuasively heartbreaking.
The way every character glides effortlessly between French and English is charming, but I fail to understand why Agathe has two chance encounters with a pair of llamas.
I fear Piani’s film will have trouble finding an audience. It’s arriving in movie theaters today amid no fanfare, and the title — while an amusing eyebrow lift — misleadingly suggests a strong comedic tone that isn’t present.
Sadly, particularly these days, modest little projects like this one too frequently get lost in the shuffle.
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