Hence the sensibility

This muted, somewhat melancholy and very French approach to the Jane Austen update (mostly in French with English subtitles, with a smattering of English) has many low-key charms. The settings, central characters and lead performances are all lovely, in an understated way.

Still, considering Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is partly a love letter to writing and writers, this romantic comedy from debut French filmmaker Laura Piani is a bit patchy when it comes to story.

Agathe (Camille Rutherford of Anatomy of a Fall) is a would-be novelist who works at Paris’s historic English-language bookshop Shakespeare and Company. (Bibliophiles will be happy to see the bookish scenes are shot at the actual store.)

Finding herself stalled out, both in her love life and her attempts to write a love story, Agathe compares herself to Jane Austen’s Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion who fears her chance at happiness has passed.

This could change, though, when Agathe is pushed by her best pal, Félix (Pablo Pauly of The French Dispatch), into attending the Jane Austen Residency, a two-week writers’ retreat at a beautiful Georgian house in the English countryside.

Agathe finds herself experiencing some romantic confusion when Felix sees her off at the cross-Channel ferry with a surprisingly passionate kiss. This perplexity is compounded when she’s picked up on the British side by the arrogant but attractive Oliver (Charlie Anson, who’s done offbeat Austen before in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).

Oliver, who works at the Residency, happens to be Jane Austen’s “great-great-great-great nephew,” though he finds Austen’s writings “a little overrated and limited in scope.”

Piani, who has worked mostly in French TV (Spiral, Plan B), is dealing with the gambit faced by all Austen-related projects: her film has a built-in audience, but that audience has very exacting standards.

Here Jane Austen functions mostly as a hook, which might disappoint some superfans. Agathe’s story holds a generalized Janeite spirit, but the specific literary references are slight.

(It should also be noted that the movie is not related to the 2009 novel Jane Austen Ruined My Life by American author Beth Pattillo. Confusing!)

Agathe, like Austen herself, is a doting aunt and fond sister, and like many Austen heroines, she finds herself choosing between two men while trying to figure out her own moral and emotional development.

There’s certainly a Pride and Prejudice vibe to Agathe and Oliver’s frosty initial meeting, with Oliver channelling a bilingual Mr. Darcy with just a touch of Hugh Grant’s Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility.

And while Félix is a great best friend, Agathe worries he’s maybe a bit too much like Mansfield Park’s Henry Crawford, a compulsive charmer who can’t commit.

Still, for all the callbacks to Austen’s early 1800s canon — Piani even supplies a Regency-costumed ball, with much dancing and glancing — this is a very 2020s work. Agathe sometimes feels as if she was “born in the wrong century,” but her story is modern and French, with a lot of striped shirts, good coffee, alcohol and cigarettes — and also a bit of nudity and sex.

There is some sisterhood with Bridget Jones. Agathe doesn’t quite reach Bridget’s level of comic klutziness, but she can be awkward and a little self-effacing. (When Félix suggests Agathe suffers from impostor syndrome, she tells him she’s “a genuine impostor.”)

And as with many modernized Austen heroines, Agathe is not dealing with social constraints — with not enough choice — but rather with too much choice. This especially applies to the wide-open options of what she calls “Uber sex” and “digital dating,” which she finds mostly involves guys tiptoeing out of her bed at night and trying not to wake her up.

As a contemporary woman, Agathe is also struggling with work, in this case the writer’s horror of the blank page, compounded by a past trauma she hasn’t come to terms with.

This outline of Agathe’s character arc sounds good, but with the film’s swift 98-minute runtime, the outline is never quite filled in. Agathe’s relationships with the other Residency participants, with the two men and even with herself remain vague.

At one point, Agathe is arguing with an aggressive critical theorist about the purpose of literature, and she says she wants novels to reflect back to her what it means to be human.

The film has bits of quiet humour, some less successful attempts at slapstick and some poignant scenes, but these beautiful moments don’t quite add up to a fully developed story.

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life could use a little more reflection.

arts@freepress.mb.ca