The Jane Austen Book Club

Starring: Amy Brenneman, Maria Bello, Kathy Baker, Emily Blunt, Maggie Grace, Hugh Dancy, Kevin Zegers
Written By: Robin Swicord
Directed By: Robin Swicord

Based on the best selling novel by Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club tells the tale of five women and one man who form a book club with each member choosing one of Austen’s books to review every month.
The club is originally formed to help Jocelyn, a dog breeder, get over the death of her pride and joy breeding dog. However almost immediately the focus changes to Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) whose husband leaves her for another woman after twenty years of marriage. Prudie (Emily Blunt) is a French teacher who has never been to France, and whose marriage is on the rocks, the most recent traumatic event being her husband cancelling a planned trip to Paris for a basketball game. Allegra (Maggie Grace) is Sylvia’s beautiful, spoilt, daredevil, lesbian daughter who routinely ends up in hospital after one of her adventures. Bernadette is the oldest in the group, with six marriages under her belt and looking ‘for just one more’. Grigg is the lone male in the group, asked to attend by Jocelyn to get Sylvia’s mind off her current troubles, but who is obviously smitten by Jocelyn.
The groups personal lives reflect the various books themes and issues with everyone having a problem similar to one of the books they are reading. There is Jocelyn, never married, fighting her attraction to the younger Grigg, and selflessly pushing him onto her friend Sylvia. Grigg thinks that he’s being directed to the much younger Allegra, and is suitably confused when he finds out she is gay. Prudie is contemplating starting an affair with an 18 year old student and almost does until reading ‘Persuasion’ shows her how a couple who have fallen out of love can try to work at the marriage and succeed. Allegra falls in and out of love quickly, moving in with the girl she met while in hospital with a broken arm after a month, and dumping her with out a second thought after finding some stories she wrote, depicting events told to her by Allegra. This is much to the chagrin of her mother Sylvia, who sees this behaviour as a mirror of her husband’s and unacceptable. Bernadette is the most stable of the characters, in her private life anyway, and mentors the various women through their problems, particularly Prudie during her period of contemplation over whether to start an affair or not.
The supporting men in the cast also get in on the club with cheating husband Daniel (Jimmy Smits) reading one of the novels and realising what he has been missing by leaving his wife. Although seeing his wife being taken out to lunch by the attractive and much younger Griggs prompts him to act in the first place!
This is a light entertaining film with just enough moments of drama and tension taking place without ruining the over all comedic value of the film. As the women and Grigg proceed through their various romantic problems one grows to like and respect them all, even the extremely uptight, and often repellent Prudie. As in Austen happy endings abound in this film with true love winning over all.
This is an excellent cast of lesser known actors, generally from TV shoes such as Judging Amy and Kane, or smaller roles in films, Kathy Baker, from Cold Mountain, but they work very well together and bring a real charm to the film. An excellent cast, a well written script and a charming story all make a film worth going to see.