Jane Austen Ruined My Life: This Autumn’s Anatomy Actress Shines in English Romantic Comedy

English romantic comedy

Agatha has as much charm as her contradictions. She is single but dreams of a love story worthy of a Jane Austen novel. He is a bookseller but dreams of writing. He has a vivid imagination, but non-existent sexuality. Life never lives up to what literature promises. Invited to an author’s residency in England, Agathe will have to face her fears and doubts to finally realize her dream of writing… and fall in love.

Directed by the charming Camille Rutherford (The Three Musketeers: Milady, Anatomy of the Fall), Jane Austen Ruined My Life is an English romantic comedy that combines humor and poetry. Inspired by the British rom-coms of the 90s, director Laura Pian presents her first feature film, set primarily in the famous English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company.

“During my studies and early career as a screenwriter, I worked at Shakespeare & Company, a magical bookstore in Saint-Michel. Laura Pian explains. Every bookstore is a theater, but this one is special: it’s an English-speaking island in the heart of the Latin Quarter. A unique place that has welcomed poets and writers from all over the world since the early 1950s, it was my refuge and it was this setting that inspired the idea for the film.”

A modern tribute to Jane Austen

Fascinated by Jane Austen and her modern and feminist pen, Laura Pian sets the scene in a grand old building in England: Jane Austen’s residence, a fictional place inspired by the places where the novelist lived. Thus, the director used the storyteller’s talent and the humor of Jane Austen’s books to write the script.

Imbued with charm and mystery, this place symbolizes the intersection between Jane Austen’s literary ideals and the modern challenges that women may face. Through this fictional residence, the film subtly explores the tension between tradition and modernity.

Between romantic nostalgia and the modern search for identity

“I wanted to show how people who spend their lives in books struggle to live in the reality of a modern love story, but also writing because they only read masterpieces. How can a shelter become a prison?“- asks the director.

Agathe seems to be imbued with this “sickness of the century” characteristic of romantic literature. She is a nostalgic woman of a bygone era who nevertheless faces a very modern search for personal identity. By meeting fantastic and inappropriate characters like herself, Agathe reveals herself on a romantic, sexual, and creative level.

Blending humor and melancholy, this insightful journey explores the complexity of human emotion and offers a delicate ode to eternal creativity and love. Jane Austen Ruined My Life is now available in theaters!