简·奥斯丁的遗憾 Miss Austen Regrets review by David Wiegand

It is probable that long before psychoanalytical literary criticism became fashionable, readers of Jane Austen's novels wanted to know how a woman who lived her relatively short life as a spinster could know so much about love, yearning, betrayal, social ambition and the frailties of the heart.

What we know for sure about Austen's 41 years on the planet comes from the few letters her sister failed to burn after the author's death and from a memoir written by Austen's nephew many years later. With such a dearth of facts, it has been left to her readers to fill in the blanks with whatever clues they believe they find in her six novels.

In the end, however, they always have to wonder if their construct is true or not.

There is so much to recommend the PBS biographical film about Austen airing Sunday night. "Miss Austen Regrets" ripples with superb performances, glorious cinematography, thrilling direction and careful attention to authenticity in set and costumes.

But what has inspired all of the above is the superb script by Gwyneth Hughes. Yes, she's able to take scraps from Austen's surviving correspondence with her sister, Cassandra, and niece, Fanny, and assemble a credible supposition of Austen's life. But the real glory of the writing is how Hughes delicately snips cuttings from Austen's fiction and grafts them carefully to the character of the author herself.

Best of all, when she is done, Hughes is smart enough to avoid saying, "This is how it must have been." Instead, she suggests a complicated woman whose seeming self-reliance and acerbic wit may have concealed not just the obvious, a broken heart, but also a growing regret for choosing the safety of solitude. Yet it is equally believable when, near the end of her life, Jane (Olivia Williams) looks back on her life and tells her sister that what she gained by eschewing marriage and a family was something perhaps even more precious: freedom.

Intentionally or not, the film's title suggests Cole Porter's sardonic ballad "Miss Otis Regrets," in which a woman's servant politely announces her mistress' unavailability for lunch because she's just killed her lover. Of course, Austen's life was devoid of that kind of drama, but we can read "Miss Austen Regrets" quite literally, that she died ruing her solitary life, or we can read it ironically, that while she may have at times wished for love and marriage, she made a conscious choice of the freedom that enabled her to write six great novels.

The film picks up Austen's story in its final chapter. At 40, Jane is frustrated because her publisher isn't willing to offer more money for her latest novel, "Emma." Her young niece, Fanny Knight, who resembles her partial namesake Fanny Price in "Mansfield Park," is anxious to find her true love and be married. While being advised in matters of life and love by her maiden aunt, Fanny is also curious about Jane's past, about why she never married. We learn that Jane was once engaged to the wealthy Harris Bigg (who, in life, was several years her junior), but the engagement lasted only overnight: Jane awoke the next morning and retracted her acceptance.

Why did she change her mind? Was she perhaps persuaded against the union as Anne Elliot is in "Persuasion"? Doubtful: It's unlikely that anyone could persuade Austen to do anything she didn't want to do, and, besides, unlike Anne Elliot's suitor, Bigg (Samuel Roukin) came from a wealthy family. In fact it's likely, as depicted in the film years later when Jane overhears a rant by her mother (Phyllida Law), that she was chastised for failing to make a financially beneficial marriage.

While Hughes' script offers a complex set of reasons that Austen remained unmarried, one of the most plausible is that, for a long time, she held out hope of marrying for love. She came close to finding "the one" in the form of the Rev. Brook Bridges (Hugh Bonneville), but he waited too long to make his feelings known to her and by the time he did, she had already resolved to remain unmarried.

Jane wavers in her single-mindedness when her brother becomes ill and she rounds up a handsome young doctor to tend to him. Suddenly, Jane is transformed into a flirtatious young woman again, as she finds Dr. Charles Haden (Jack Huston) not only a young hunk but also one who has read and actually understands her novels.

Lest we come away thinking of Jane as a self-sacrificing font of virtuous behavior, she's none too pleased when her young niece begins flirting with Dr. McDreamy, and he seems to be interested in her. These moments reveal less attractive aspects of Austen's character, but like so many moments in Hughes' script, they contribute to our understanding of Austen as a complete and fallible human being.

Williams ("The Sixth Sense," "X-Men: The Last Stand") is superb in the title role. She perfectly embodies the complicated woman that Hughes has pieced together from Austen's letters and novels. Greta Scacchi is wonderful as Austen's sister, Cassandra, whose overprotectiveness of Jane led to one of the greatest tragedies in all of literature: the burning of most of Austen's letters after her death.

Strong performances are also delivered by Law as Jane's mother, Bonneville as Bridges and Imogen Poots as Fanny Knight.

Jeremy Lovering directs with care, patience and loving attention to detail. There is virtually nothing to regret in this thought-provoking and heartfelt film.

But, again, is the story true? In the hands of such a capable team of writer, director and performers, it very well could be.

*小建议*如果你喜欢这篇文章,可以顶上去;或者Copy下这篇文章的链接发给MSN或QQ上的朋友; 我们永远相信,分享是一种美德,Great People Share Knowledge... (130影萍网谢谢您的关注和支持！)

上一篇：无忧无虑 Happy-Go-Lucky review by James Berardinelli
下一篇：简·奥斯丁的遗憾 Miss Austen Regrets review by Americans