Her literary cannon has been repeatedly plundered for the big and small screen, and now Jane Austen is the subject of her own period drama in Becoming Jane, which chronicles a pivotal liaison and major influence on her literary work - the doomed love affair between Jane (Anne Hathaway) and roguish lawyer, Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy).
Jane�s well-intentioned parents know that money is everything in their class-obsessed society and urge their youngest daughter to accept a proposal of marriage from the sweet but socially inept Mr Wisley (Laurence Fox), nephew of formidable local aristocrat, Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith). Blessed with a feisty independence and copious amounts of precocious wit, Jane resists his advances. And then the dashing Tom Lefroy enters the frame to complicate matters further.
Initially Tom and Jane seem like complete opposites � he is the worldly lawyer-in-training, bringing with him from London a dubious reputation and a distain for unsophisticated rural folk, whilst she is the sheltered daughter of the local clergyman, with an apparent obsession with propriety. But gradually their battle of wit and intellect gives way to flirtatious verbal sparring and eventually romance.
Well, that�s the film version of events, whether this actually happened is very much open to debate. Despite numerous biographies, including John Spence�s Becoming Jane Austen, the film�s primary reference material, Jane Austen�s life remains largely elusive. Director, Julian Jarrold calls his story an �imaginative response� to the author�s life and work, so the revelation that Jane actually experienced the kind of passionate love she wrote about may owe more to wishful thinking than fact.
Still, as you would expect from the period drama specialists that brought us Mrs Brown, Ecosse Films creates a richly detailed portrait of life in Regency England, a world of tea dances, strolls in the woods, impossibly tight corsets, and sumptuous splendour (Lady Gresham�s opulent residence) set against more lowly environs (the Austen�s humble rectory).
At times it�s as if Jane has stumbled onto the pages of one of her own novels. Lefroy has Darcy�s arrogance and charisma and there is much of the stubborn, intelligent Jane in Elizabeth Bennet. However, screenwriter Kevin Hood is careful to avoid real-life characters that are simply caricatures of their literary counterparts � particularly Mrs Austen (Julie Walters) who could so easily have become a one-dimensional, comic Mrs Bennet figure.
Hathaway and McAvoy are suitably attractive and likeable leads, deftly conveying their internal struggles so that you genuinely feel for their predicament and are willing them to triumph over circumstance. And when your supporting players include such legendary screen presences as Maggie Smith and the late Ian Richardson (at his sardonic best as Lefroy�s wealthy, perpetually disapproving uncle and patron, Judge Langlois), you really can�t go far wrong.
An exceptional cast and intelligent, multi-layered script raise this above the level of just another Jane Austen adaptation, and there�s a certain poignancy in the fact that Jane�s real life lacks the fairytale ending of her fictional heroines. We may not learn anything new about one of our most celebrated authors but as a classic love story, Becoming Jane should charm even the most unsentimental of cinemagoers.
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