The Jane Austen Book Club

The world of The Jane Austen Book Club seems to want to mirror the world of Jane Austen, but Hollywoodland, as is often the case, is far from even the putative fictional, rural, pastoral, tightly structured world of Austen's Regency England. Thank the pastoral gods for the wonderful cast that first-time feature director Robin Swicord has assembled for her club--they manage to vivify what could have been mere set-up characters in set-up situations.

Bernadette (Kathy Baker), a fiftyish six-times-married divorcee assembles a group of friends and new-found acquaintances to devote themselves to a continuing bookclub dialogue about the six Austen novels. The impetus for the club is to help Austenize--to make AWARE--the group, consisting initially of two longtime friends, Jocelyn (Maria Bello) and Sylvia (Amy Brenneman). The former is a dog breeder long abstemious of commitment and men; the latter ended up happily marrying Daniel (Jimmy Smits), whom both had dated in college. After Daniel unexpectedly informs Sylvia that, after 25 years, he has fallen in love with someone else, their gay daughter, Allegra (Maggie Grace), joins the group in mommy-support, while herself falling serially in and out of love with various girlfriends. An add-on waif, Prudie (Emily Blunt), is conscripted by Bernadette, a high school teacher unsure of her diffident husband Dean's (Mark Blucas) commitment and playing dangerously in a precocious flirtation with one of her students, Trey (Kevin Zeggers).

The round-out of the group is Grigg (Hugh Dancy), whom Jocelyn dragoons on an elevator as a potential group member, the "male voice," and a possible younger-man diversion for Sylvia during her marital travails. (Grigg is, of course, interested in only one "older woman," Jocelyn.

While the performances (especially of Ms. Baker and Mr. Dancy) soften the hard edges of the pre-cast, formulaic plot contrivances that try to parallel Austen's characters' lives and circumstances, the final scene epitomizes how even well-intentioned Hollywood endings mock the hard-won denouments of Austen's works. Bernadette wins a seventh husband. Jocelyn is finally woo-ed by Grigg. Daniel returns to Sylvia. Prudie recognizes that Dean is the real thing and Trey merely a dream-myth. Oh, and Allegra settles down. Prescription: take two Austens in the evening and your life will be fine in the morning.

So the film has settled for Disney rather than Austen.

                                                           Howard Buck