The Anti-Austen

Rating: Null/10 (13 May 2001)

Spoilers herein.
No author has been more pillaged for film than Jane Austen. Her books have been the source of `straight' adaptations, teen movies, and the recent `Mansfield Park.' In that last film, we had the modern notion of a film about Jane the writer conflated with the story she is writing.
Here, the adapter of `Pride and Prejudice' and `Emma' takes things to the next level, creating a P&P that features an antihero. For those not familiar with Austen, her novels are marvelously written, concerning `manners and morals.' Her method is to cast a few honorable people at the mercy of frivolous conventions. The charm of these books is how the frivolity of the times is embodied in some absolutely ridiculous secondary characters. The personal politics of the time are clarified and amplified through this device.
So here we have the next step. We have a writer and the story she writes, just as in `Park,' but here the heroine is one of the ridiculous, formerly incidental characters. Bridget is a genuinely trivial person -- stupid, unattractive, without any of the qualities that would elevate her into Austen's world of the heroine.
The story slogs through so many references from P&P: the overheard criticisms at the party; the `in spite of my better judgement I like you' speech, the false accusations against Darcy; the character Darcy himself played by the very actor from P&P; the `it is a truth universally acknowledged that..' line; the actor who played Bigley in P&P does a walkon here. Natalie here is much the same role Embeth played in `Park.'
What we have here, disguised as a `Notting Hill' for women, is a truly adventuresome idea: Austin from the perspective of one of the dummies. A sort of `Guildenstern.' I can see how this could have worked, if the ridiculous social conventions were actually ridiculed. As it turns out we are asked to buy every one of them: and Bridget gets her man not because she is internally noble, but quite the opposite: he loves her because she is inarticulate, stupid, fat, pliable and trivial. In the process -- since we identify with Renee -- we willingly blend into the broken society.
I suppose this is the `identify with the underdog' strategy in mass marketing. Obviously it works as the film is a hit. And because it was cheap to make, will be immensely profitable. I just wish they hadn't spit on Ms Austen in the process: there is something noble about her women, something which contributed significantly to our modern notions of romance. This is an anti-romance.
Renee was multidimensional in `Nurse Betty,' or I thought so. Here (and in `Irene') she shows me I was mistaken. Her acting is wholly in her face, and shallow at that. She could have played Jane playing Bridget, or at least a better actress could have.