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.
