Director: Laura Piani
Screenplay: Laura Piani
Producers: Gabrielle Dumon
Starring: Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson
Year: 2024
Country: France
BBFC Certification: 15
Duration:
I love a good Rom-Com. The cynical among you may suggest that such a phrase constitutes an oxymoron but the Rom-Com has long been a reliable source of solid entertainment, it’s just that the predominantly female demographic has led to the emphatic rejection of its tropes in the same way that the male demographic for Action movies has led to the celebration of their similarly repetitive narrative patterns. A woman seeking love? How cliched and sickening, eh? Wait, what’s this? A troubled man blowing stuff up and shooting people? Well, this clearly has underlying themes and narrative subversions to generate a thousand podcasts worth of discussion. Come, let us rewatch Con Air for the fiftieth time as we decry the Nancy Meyers films we’ve never actually seen!
My protectiveness over the Rom-Com stems from a genuine belief that it has the potential to be our greatest genre. At their best, Rom-Coms are adult films about relationships, attraction, sex and gender relations that probe the most fascinating crannies of human sexuality. Even the fluffy fantasies of the more frivolous examples often retain an element of this, viewing the human condition through a fairy tale idealism that the films themselves acknowledge as virtually unattainable in the real world. Of course, all this is not to say that the Rom-Com genre doesn’t have as many misfires as the Action genre. The commercial popularity of both has resulted in copious amounts of filler that replays the tentpole tropes without any of the necessary emotional elaboration. It’s inevitable then that sometimes better examples of the Rom-Com get consumed by the fatigue of apparent Deja Vu, with critics becoming too jaded to check for the substance. Because of this, when a Rom-Com does achieve strong critical notices, it’s always of immediate interest to me. Such was the case with French director Laura Piani’s debut feature Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.
One issue I have sometimes found with Rom-Coms is that they can get so mired in the Rom that they forget to bring the Com, or else the Com becomes so far removed by way of other subgenres like Gross Out that by the time we return to the Rom it feels thoroughly unearned. Despite being separated by a hyphen, the Rom and the Com need to remain enmeshed for a Rom-Com to work. In the case of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, I felt that the amount of Com was a little lacking but that wasn’t necessarily a problem given that I feel the term Rom-Com is a bit of a misnomer in this case. I’d classify Jane Austen Wrecked My Life as more of a Romantic Drama with a vein of slyly observational humour that helps maintain a lightness in the face of its darker themes of loss and mental health. The film’s strongest link to the Rom-Com genre is in its structure which reverently adheres to conventions such as the love triangle, the hate-each-other-then-love-each-other dynamic and the climactic romantic flourish. Reviews that cited Jane Austen Wrecked My Life’s predictability as a problem seemed to rather miss the point of its deliberate homage to romance, both literary and cinematic.
One element that came in for some criticism which I felt was a little fairer was Jane Austen Wrecked My Life’s lack of focus in its literary themes. Austen and her work are referred to several times and the conventions of her narratives are explored to some degree but the film seems to have ambitions to cast its net wider and it dilutes its impact. The problem is reflected in the film’s tagline, “Literature promised her great expectations but life never delivered anything close.” It seems curious in a film that references Jane Austen in the title to opt for a tagline that alludes instead to Dickens. The notion that the film is primarily about the difference between idealised notions of love in fiction vs. the complexities of real world love is also a little misleading. I found the protagonist’s love of literature and aspirations to be a writer herself to be the most underexplored part of the film, far from the driving force that the title would suggest.
If Jane Austen Wrecked My Life doesn’t quite live up to its billing as a refreshingly different modern take on the Rom-Com, it does at least deliver on the cosy conventions of the genre while adding a touch of melancholy realism. Wisely sticking to a tight 98 minute runtime, the film’s pace is gentle and leisurely enough for the viewer to soak up the visual pleasures of a Jane Austen Residency writer’s retreat in the English countryside, even though it was shot in France. The use of both the French and English language works well, although it should be noted that this release of the film offers subtitles only for the French dialogue, meaning the hard-of-hearing will miss out on 50% of the dialogue. One thing that keeps Jane Austen Wrecked My Life afloat above all others is the central performance by Camille Rutherford. Although her character Agathe fulfils many of the Rom-Com heroine clichés, Rutherford makes her into a deliciously flawed, realistically neurotic character whose personality extends way beyond the romantic elements of the plot. There is vivid pain and psychological damage there, which Rutherford plays equally well for comedy and drama, often simultaneously. Pablo Pauly is also good as Agathe’s best friend and potential love interest, Félix. Their scenes together are the best and most convincing of the film, although frustratingly their chemistry is far stronger than that between Rutherford and Charlie Anson, the couple for whom we’re supposed to be rooting. Still, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life makes an astute differentiation between romantic and platonic chemistry, acknowledging that the two can easily cross over but are sometimes incompatible. That it takes the time to explore the intricacies of the line between friendship and attraction is greatly to Jane Austen Wrecked My Life’s credit, but it would’ve been more impactful if the non-platonic romance was a little more convincingly drawn. Then again, perhaps the boldness of that romantic strand is designed as a fairy tale counterpoint to the realism of Agathe and Félix’s awkward romantic escalation. Still, when the film’s romantic payoff arrived, despite it adhering to the Rom-Com conventions I so enjoy, I did find myself feeling the emotional dissatisfaction that Agathe was finally supposed to be shedding.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life was released on DVD and Blu-ray by Icon Film Distribution on 28 July 2025.