Austen's powers
I can't guarantee that manly men won't lose some testosterone while watching "The Jane Austen Book Club." But those fearless enough to venture into this smart and engaging chick-lit flick will be amply rewarded for their hormonal losses.
You don't need to read Austen's six novels before seeing this movie. Still, a knowledge of the British author's works -- including "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility" -- enhances an appreciation for insights by the movie's characters, who, in the story's clever premise, turn out to be modern updates of Austen's literary characters.
The book club begins when six-time divorcee Bernadette (an effusive Kathy Baker) sees a woman in distress while in line to buy movie tickets.
The aptly named Prudie (a portrait in wounded vulnerability by Emily Blunt) works as a high school French teacher. Her insensitive jock husband (a study in clueless self-centeredness by Marc Blucas) undermines her ego. Her abusive mother (Lynn Redgrave) kills her spirit. Desperate, Prudie reaches for a bad boy student (Kevin Zegers) with hungry eyes.
Bernadette takes Prudie under her wing and proposes the Jane Austen Book Club, six novels to be presented by six people over six months. She asks her friends to help.
Jocelyn (Maria Bello) has never married, and prefers raising dogs to romance. Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) is a basket case, on the rebound from her duplicitous hubby Daniel (Jimmy Smits), who unceremoniously dumps her for a woman in his law office.
Sylvia's daredevil lesbian daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace) takes the fifth chair. The sixth, which might have gone to Daniel, instead goes to a new man in town, Grigg (Hugh Dancy), a tech geek with a love for gadgets, science fiction and the unapproachable Jocelyn.
I liked "The Jane Austen Book Club" the first time I saw it. I liked it even better after a second viewing.
True, there's not much cinematic technique to admire here. In fact, this represents fairly conventional moviemaking.
Nonetheless, screenwriter Robin Swicord, in an auspicious directorial feature debut, loves these characters and pumps affection and emotional urgency into every scene. Even if their frazzled lives wrap up way too neatly, Swicord never dumbs-down Austen's punchy prose to plain-Jane dialogue.
Originally, Swicord had been tapped to direct her screenplay "The Jane Prize," about a family of Jane Austen scholars. Instead, she directed "The Jane Austen Book Club," based on the bestseller by Karen Joy Fowler, also an award-winning science-fiction writer. (Ah, now we see where Grigg gets his enthusiasm for science fiction!)
Swicord's tight direction is backed up by a solid cast, especially Dancy, a winning combination of self-aware nerdiness and desire to please, plus the blue-eyed Blunt, who never lets Prudie drift into a whiny victim.
At a crucial point, Prudie arrives at a literal crossroads -- a street intersection. Instead of flashing "walk," the signal flashes four words: "What would Jane do?"
"The Jane Austen Book Club" does exactly what Jane would do -- entertain us, enlighten us and delight us.
"The Jane Austen Book Club"
3 out of four
Opens today
Maria Bello as Jocelyn
Kathy Baker as Bernadette
Emily Blunt as Prudie
Amy Brenneman as Sylvia
With Hugh Dancy, Jimmy Smits, Maggie Grace and Marc Blucas.
Written and directed by Robin Swicord; based on the book by Karen Joy Fowler. Produced by John Calley, Julie Lynn and Diana Napper. A Sony Classics release. At Piper's Alley in Chicago, Renaissance Place in Highland Park and the Evanston CineArts 6. Rated PG-13 (sexual situations, language, drug use). Running time: 105 minutes.