Becoming Jane (2007)

A film about Jane Austen, one of the greatest writers of English literature, will garner expectations and hopes, especially with a cascade of stars newly discovered (James McAvoy, Anne Hathaway) and well-established (Julie Walters, Maggie Smith, James Cromwell). That it focuses on her life before she becomes a writer certainly had not dulled my appetite.

The 22 yr old Austen is played by the very pretty Anne Hathaway, who you'll know from Brokeback Mountain and The Devil Wears Prada. We meet her family when her older sister is happily married. The cash-strapped parents have the pressing problem of finding eligible young Jane a husband. A promising offer is the stuck-up relative of wealthy Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith), who Jane rejects.

Let's meet Tom Lefroy. He's a penniless, charming, intelligent, apprentice lawyer. He also loves boxing, drinking and the fairer sex. These latter hobbies, mind you, do not endear him to his uncle, the imperious Judge Langlois, who promptly sentences him to a summer in Hampshire as punishment. In a rustic backdrop of dancing and match-making, Jane and Tom develop a teasing, flirtatious rapport. Unlike the other men in her life, Tom presents Jane with intellectual company as well as dashing good looks and a flair for the odd chat-up. As they grow more serious about each other, they become equally aware of how doomed their relationship is - something their elders twigged on page one. But Tom has given Jane something she needs - the knowledge of the heart that will impassion her writing.

Firstly be warned. If you are expecting a nice feel-good movie, don't bother. This made me thoroughly miserable. Not just because a poignant lonely destiny is too much to bear, but because it's a wasted opportunity to bring a great life to the screen. Our ultimate theme Austen's writing, yet we see little to convince that this bland and photogenic girl has much between the ears. In Devil Wears Prada, an outstanding script enabled Hathaway to suggest hidden brainpower. In Becoming Jane, the occasionally erudite lines sound leaden and false. Her body language, meant to portray a rebel, seems a bit anachronistic. Although she looks quite resplendent, dashing across the hills in a billowing red dress to watch the lads skinny-dipping, the film is a sad disappointment in the development of Hathaway's otherwise promising career. Kate Winslet or Natalie Portman (who were apparently also considered for the role) might well have fared better: they have a depth and experience that could perhaps have compensated for such a clunky script. Maggie Smith and other strong actors are reduced to ciphers and little more than icing on a badly made cake.

On the other hand, James McAvoy (fresh from The Last King of Scotland) is a revelation. In what seems like a flash of brilliance in the generally myopic casting, he shines in every scene. A talented actor, he also brings his skills in boxing and sport to imbue Lefroy with vibrancy and charisma. It is when he works his seductive charms on Jane that he also brings out the best in his co-star. After her first adult kiss, Jane trembles, wondering if she has done it well. Hathaway does gooey-eyed emotion much better than persuading us she is a genius about to happen. The film gathers pace as we are drawn into an emotional cat and mouse. Jane's 'experience of the heart' that will inspire her, is the one of the best things about the film, second only to the large and constantly moist dollops of budget-saving Irish countryside.<

Fmovies: I have to say that I enjoyed it. I think there were some problems with it, but overall a nice film. Hathaway's accent is very good apart from a couple of very minor slips that could almost go unnoticed. The film, the person I went with said, was a little too slow in places, but I did not find this so. I think that the director perhaps put a little too much emphasis on Austen's inspirations for her novels and in particular Pride and Prejudice, but I did not mind this too much as that is my favourite novel. The acting all round was very good. MaCavoy played it nicely, giving a lot of energy. I thought that the opening and closing were perhaps a little weak. I don't want to say too much in case others have not seen it yet (though of course most know the ending, they may not know the films interpretation of it). Perhaps the only few weaknesses to the film was the fact that perhaps Hathaway was too pretty to play Austen, though she did a very competent job indeed. I think that Anna Maxwell Martin may perhaps have been more suited?! The other is that I would have liked to have seen slightly more quick wittedness on the part of Jane. She was shown as competent, but not as cutting and quick as I and, I imagine, many believe she was. However, despite this I quite enjoyed the film, and wouldn't mind watching it again. It is better that Pride and Prejudice 2005 adaptation in my opinion. 8/10.

I was fortunate to come across an article explaining this film. It is a speculative fiction based upon a few facts. Speculation was aroused by the fact that a woman who never married and apparently never had a love affair came to have such a deep and intelligent understanding of relationships. I shan't expand on how potentially offensive that is. But story line is based on a few simple facts. While he was in the country Jane Austen would have almost certainly met Mr Lefroy; while on a journey to see her sister she had a rather long stop off in London during which time she began writing Pride and Prejudice and there was the mention of some letters.

It started out so well; the stifling quiet of a country life broken by our future genius at work. The structure of this opening sequence was very effective. I was thinking I'm going to love this film. But there was a niggling in the back of my mind. None of the reviews had been great, but I didn't know why (I hadn't actually read any only seen the 2 ½ or 3 stars).

I continued thinking it was wonderful through most of the film. James McAvoy was beautifully intense, Anne Hathaway was solid, Maggie Smith delightfully amusing and Anna Maxwell Martin underused. There were some beautiful scenes, some so intense. For example a scene in a ball when they are both standing back to back apparently to talking other people but having a very deep conversation.

But then, as with far too many movies we moved through the climax to an ending of this story line and that story line oh and we'd better conclude this one as well and now everything is tied up in a neat little bundle.

This is a film that would have benefited from an ambivalent ending, because, aside from the fact that we know she ends up the Western World's highest selling female author the film wasn't actually about that. The film was about the journey toward it. To have left us hanging when, perhaps, she was leaving Lefroy or back in her stiflingly quiet house would have been much more effective in terms of the story and strengthened the film. It simply is not a happy ending but they tried their damned well hardest to make it one.

I'm afraid I must give this a very generous 7 rather than what could have been a deserving 8 had the film makers (or the studio or whoever the twats are that decide on these things) the courage to make this a film, not Hollywood.

Becoming Jane fmovies. Hollywood can't seem to get enough of dead female English writers. Hot on the heels of Miss Potter, and in advance of films about the Brontes, we have this romantic confection about Jane Austen's youthful fling with Irish barrister Tom Lefroy.

There have already been howls of criticism from outraged Janeites that the film is historically inaccurate. It's true that English teachers will have a fit at some elements of the story: at best speculative and unsubstantiated, at worst downright erroneous. The filmmakers admittedly didn't have a lot of historical material to work from. The true background to the story is contained in a couple of letters written by Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra, and an admission by Tom Lefroy in old age that he had once been in 'boyish love' with the writer. On this slightly shaky platform, the filmmakers have built a story of repressed passion and defiance of social mores that is a work of fiction worthy of a novel in its own right.

This doesn't really matter. Nobody in their right mind would ever accept the version of events presented by a Hollywood biopic as historical gospel. The only viewers who will be taken in by the story seen here will be those who are too lazy, too uninterested or too credulous to do the modicum of research needed to find out the real facts, and who cares what such people think? This film may be largely untrue, but what really matters is whether it works on its own terms, qua film.

Unfortunately, it doesn't, or at least not entirely. The main reason for this is the underlying premise. It is implied that without Jane and Tom's youthful affair Jane Austen would never have written her six great novels, and in particular (perhaps because it's the most familiar to audiences) Pride and Prejudice. We see Jane angrily destroying a juvenile story criticized by Tom, and later, in the throes of love, bashing out the first draft of P & P (in a single night, which shows an impressive turn of speed). It's plain that, as Tom tells her, 'experience is vital'.

The same clunkingly literal idea – that an artist must experience emotions in order to write about them successfully - underscored Shakespeare in Love, but there it was handled with a rather lighter touch. Here we are asked to believe that Pride and Prejudice was not a distillation of all Jane Austen's youthful experiences enlivened by a vivid imagination, a sharp sense of humour and a dollop of literary genius, but the next best thing to a true story. The reasons for this approach are obvious: cinema can dramatize Johnny Cash learning the guitar, or Picasso experimenting with paint, but the spectacle of a writer sitting at a desk dreaming and scribbling palls pretty rapidly.

The irony of a film that takes such wild liberties with the facts relying upon this trite old idea would certainly have been apparent to Jane Austen, whose mastery of irony is emphasized rather unsubtly throughout. Moreover, it's intellectually dishonest; lacking the ability to create a Mr Darcy, the filmmakers borrow freely from Jane Austen's characterisation in creating Tom, and thereby cheekily suggest that the author was the one who lacked the imagination to make such a person up.

These reservations aside, does the film have anything going for it? Yes. The script has some witty moments and at least makes a decent stab at realistic 18th century dialogue. Ireland is a surprisingly effective and gorgeous substitute for Hampshire, and the autumnal

To make a film about the life of Jane Austen, one of the most celebrated (if not the most celebrated) female authors of all time which manages to patronise women is quite some achievement and Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams should be justly proud. This seemingly impossible feat is brought off by pretty much ignoring her many literary masterpieces and focusing instead, with barefaced inaccuracy, on a failed early romantic liaison. I'm not going to criticise the actors as they all too often get the blame for badly drawn characters but the notion that Anne Hathaway's Jane could have written a book like Pride and Prejudice is, frankly, hilarious.

I can only assume that the makers of this film have mistaken all that swooning over Colin Firth's wet shirt scene and Greg Wise's heroics on horseback as evidence that fans of Jane Austen are nothing more than lovers of ditsy romances.

Yes, Austen's stories are, essentially love stories but take the romance out and it's still great literature. It is her timeless wit, intellect and brutal exposure of human nature that has made Austen one of the most widely read and appreciated authors in history.

There is a very great, and not at all delicious, irony that the world Jane Austen describes is one in which a woman is judged merely on her ability to make a good match and that, despite all her critical acclaim as a writer, this is what film makers centuries later should choose to reduce her own life to.

I watched this film, against my better judgement, on a flight between Quito and Miami. The immigration queues couldn't come quick enough.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that reviews of Jane Austen movies must begin with the phrase 'It is a truth universally acknowledged...'.

I know very little about Jane Austen's life, although I spotted an error in this movie anyway: her deaf-mute older brother George was NOT raised at home with her (as seen here); he was institutionalised, and the hand-signing which Anne Hathaway briefly uses here is partly anachronistic. I confess that I've very little interest in Miss Austen, nor in her novels. But I'm hugely interested in the Regency period in which she lived. As I watched 'Becoming Jane', I was pleasantly astounded by the incredible period detail throughout the film: the houses (inside and out), the books, the churchyards, the carriages and coaches, the clothing. Even the musical instruments, the music and the dances are authentic! Well done! Of course, all these late 18th-century people have 20th-century orthodontia, and their hair is too clean. And the cricket bats don't look (or sound) as if they were made of willow, as they should have been.

I know that some people will be watching this movie for the costumes, so let me assure you that there are plenty of Empire waists, coal-scuttle bonnets, top boots and Kate Greenaway frocks. Several of the ladies wear delightful gloves.

This movie follows most of the rules for costume-drama chick-flicks. We get the de rigueur scene in which fully-clothed young women surreptitiously watch naked young men. (But not the reverse, of course.) We get the de rigueur scene in which a young woman performs a traditionally male activity and (of course) she beats the men at their own game. At a cricket match, Jane Austen steps into the crease. The bowler gives her an easy one, and (of course) she knocks it for six.

I suspect that most of this movie is fiction, and there is indeed one of those 'based on facts' disclaimers in the end credits. I was annoyed that various characters in this film constantly tell Jane Austen that, as a woman, she cannot hope to be the equal of a man, nor can she expect a happy life without a husband. These may indeed have been the accepted realities of Austen's time, but I had difficulty believing that so many people (especially young men who hope to win her) would make a point of making these comments so explicitly and so often.

Also, everyone in this movie keeps telling Jane that she cannot possibly write about anything which she hasn't experienced. (So she can't write about sexual passion unless ... nudge, nudge.) However, even in Austen's day, this premise was demonstrably untrue. If I want to write a murder mystery, do I need to commit a murder?

The performances in this film are universally excellent. Any movie with Dame Maggie Smith in it, I'm there. Ian Richardson (in his last role) is superb, wringing the full value from some succulent dialogue. James Cromwell has matured into one of the finest character actors I've ever seen, progressing light-years beyond the infantile Norman Lear sitcom roles of his early career.

As Jane Austen, Anne Hathaway has the sense to attempt only a very slight English accent, but she is far too pretty for this role. The real Jane Austen was apparently not pretty, and this was a major reason for why she never married. It beggars belief that the Jane Austen seen here -- the one who looks like Anne Hathaway -- would have so much difficulty attracting suitors. However, I'm a realist: there's simply no w