Review: The Jane Austen Book Club
Ensemble Cast Gives Warm Performances. Emily Blunt Stands Out
Oct 16, 2007
The Jane Austen Book Club begins with an ending. Jocelyn (Maria Bello), a dog breeder, has just lost her most beloved Rhodesian Ridgeback. The woman—single, and living alone—is devastated. Her friend Bernadette (Kathy Baker) thinks a diversion is in order. She mulls over the idea of an all-women book club, and she knows her friends are fond of Jane Austen. However, the idea only reaches fruition when another relationship comes to an end. After more than twenty years of marriage, and the birth of three children, Daniel (Jimmy Smits) confesses his infidelity to wife Sylvia (Amy Brenneman). What’s more, he tells Sylvia that he is not giving the other woman up.
The Club
Bernadette’s plan to have a book club for ‘women only’ doesn’t pan out. Initially, there is herself, Jocelyn, Sylvia, and Sylvia’s daughter, Allegra (Lost’s Maggie Grace), then the addition of Prudie (Emily Blunt), a high school French teacher who accepts Bernadette’s invitation to join—all women. But, when Jocelyn meets young, good-looking sci-fi fan Grigg (Hugh Dancy) at a hotel bar, she can’t resist asking him to join their group, hoping that maybe he can offer a diversion altogether different than the one Bernadette had in mind for the jilted Sylvia. Naturally, she is ignorant, maybe willingly so, of his attraction to her.
The Stars
The film is entertaining from beginning to end. Each member of the group has her own story to tell alongside the stories they create together; as a result, there is always something to keep the audience’s interest. Second-time director Swicord, who wrote the screenplay, adapted from the eponymous novel by Karen Joy Fowler, manages to keep a tight rein on the various storylines so that viewers are never treated to a sloppy transition or loose end, in fact, the ending is a little too clean. No one character is singled out as the star of the film, at least, not in terms of screen time.
Each actor is convincing in her—or his—role. Hugh Dancy is almost achingly sweet as Grigg. Amy Brenneman is honest in her portrayal of a woman coming to terms with the end of her life as she knew it. But the real surprise was Maggie Grace, and the revelation, Emily Blunt. Grace, best known for her role as Shannon Rutherford on ABC’s Lost, plays a quick-to-fall-in-and-out-of-love lesbian whose death-defying hobbies garner the worry of her parents and, apparently, a lot of dates. The young actress shows real dimension, taking on her Austenite character—a modern-day Marianne (from Sense and Sensibility)—with ease. With The Jane Austen Book Club, Blunt, Grace’s on-screen opposite, continues to blaze trails in North American film.
To date, Blunt has received two Golden Globe nominations, one for her feisty performance as a beauty magazine assistant in The Devil Wears Prada, and winning the same year for her role in the TV movie Gideon’s Daughter. Her turn as Prudie in The Jane Austen Book Club, played with reserve and haughtiness, is vastly different from her past performances as manipulative, out-spoken young women. Prudie is almost as afraid to speak as she is of not being heard. The depth of Prudie’s character is not manifested through put upon situations, that is, the script—unlike the other five characters in the film. The character owes her tangibility and complexity to a talented young actress just barely making her start.
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