Film Review: The Jane Austen Book Club

Liverpool Daily Post

The Jane Austen Book Club, (12A, 106 mins)
Stars: Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Kathy Baker, Amy Brenneman, Maggie Grace, Jimmy Smits
Directed by Robin Swicord

IF YOU know your Jane Austen, then you might get something out of the Jane Austen Book Club.

If you know nothing or have forgotten the plots, you are likely to be all at sea in this movie in which five women and a coerced male form a club to discuss the books.

They pick a book a month and discover the plots in some ways mirror their own lives. But the plots are never properly explained, characters’ names just pop up, and the discussions are very much for the initiated.

Besides, I don’t think the Austen stories really do reflect the lives of these self-obsessed American women, right, who suffer various prob- lems from a wayward husband to a crush on a younger man plus, of course, the token lesbian.

Based on the best-selling novel by Karen Jay Fowler, it features some fine performances, notably from British actress Emily Blunt as teacher Prudie, who fancies one of her pupils, and Maria Bellow as dog-lover Maria who tries to fix up the male in the group for her friend, not realising it is herself he really wants.

There are some comic moments but even an Austen reader like myself got lost in the intricacies of these women’s sad relationships and their relevance to the books.