Movie Maven

Jane Austen.

Sigh.

I love Jane Austen. I loved her before she was cool, too. I loved her best when I was a bookish teenager, whose heart fluttered at the notes of passionate longing and stolen glances scattered in Austen's novels. I loved her characters- those magnificent women, clever and witty and sometimes plain, who peopled the upper-middle class lodgings of her genteel English settings. And the men. Gentlemen, cads, fiends, scholars, attractive but conniving cousins- these were my kind of heartthrobs. Forget J.T.T and Brad Pitt. I was a Darcy kind of chick.

The recent rash of Austen adaptations, pseudo-adaptations and references have had me simultaneously enthralled and a little perturbed. Though I will always be a Colin Firth woman, the Keira Knightly adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was a gorgeous revelation of a movie. It was lavish and brilliantly cast, and had a cinematic color palette like a nineteenth century oil painting. And I'm sorry, but I stand by Clueless, a vague interpretation of Emma. I thought it was funny when I was eleven, and I think it's funny now. I was, unfortunately, vastly disappointed with Becoming Jane last year, which seemed to have the notion that only way Austen could have written about love was to have experienced it herself. There is absolutely no factual evidence of any love of Austen's life, save for a few mentions in her diary of a flirtation or two. But since then everyone and their mother has been leaping on the Austen bandwagon- buying their I Heart Mr. Darcy t-shirts and their "An Elizabeth in a Darcy-less world" book bags.

Philistines.

There is a lot of speculation as to why Austen has been graced with so many adaptations of her novels and her life (the only one who appears to have had more is good old Bill Shakespeare.) But PBS, doesn't seem to mind, as long as it rakes in the donation dollars from Viewers Like You. Last Sunday, PBS will air six adaptations of Austen's novels, as well as a biopic Jane Austen Regrets about all these proposals she was supposed to have turned down.

Yesterday was the airing of a 90-minute adaptation of Persuasion.

It wasn't that great.

There's only so many scenes we can have with Sally Hawkins as Anne Elliott, writing in her diary and then looking up at the camera pensively. How much pining can one audience endure? The film unfortunately falls into the genre of the interminable Masterpiece Theater drawing-room drama, with little substance (or provocative dialogue) to back up the gorgeous shots of the English countryside.

I have greater hopes for some of the other films, many of which have been written and/or directed by British adaptation guru Andrew Davies, who directed both the quintessential Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth, as well as a version of Charles Dickens' Bleak House that haunts me to this very day. They'll be airing every Sunday from January 20 to April 6, with a two-week break for the beloved PBS telethon.