Tagline: You don’t have to know the books to be in the club.
The Jane Austen Book Club. Six California friends (Maria Bello, Amy Brenneman, Emily Blunt) form a book club devoted to studying the works of 19th-century author Jane Austen. As each deals with life’s assorted challenges, he or she finds unexpected similarities and wisdom within the pages of Austen’s witty prose.
Today’s central California may be far removed from Regency England, but some things never change. We’re still every bit as preoccupied with the complexities of marriage, friendship, romantic entanglements, position, and social manners and mores as was Jane Austen at the turn of the 1800s. THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB reveals the lives of an ensemble of present-day friends through the witty prism of their literary heroine.
Six book club members, six Austen books, six interwoven story lines over six months in the busy modern setting of Sacramento, where city and suburban sprawl meet natural beauty. While the contemporary stories never slavishly parallel the Austen plots, the six characters find echoes, predictions, warnings and wisdom about their own trajectories within Austen’s beloved narratives.
The members of the Jane Austen Book Club are: Bernadette(Kathy Baker), whose life history is a paradox: how could this warm, wise, earthy free spirit possibly have been married six times? Now mid-50s and solo, Bernadette is a supportive friend to all and an island of calm amid the more turbulent lives around her. It’s Bernadette’s idea to convene her friends in an “All-Austen-All-The-Time” book club, because who better than Jane Austen to cure what ails the world? Once in a while, though, her book club remarks betray a wistful hope that love and romance are not completely behind her.
As ready as Bernadette has been to take the marital plunge repeatedly, her friend Jocelyn (Maria Bello) has stayed well out of the romantic fray. She declares that she’s never been in love-except, perhaps, with her champion Rhodesian Ridgeback, Pridey, faithful companion and sire of the noble line of dogs she breeds on her small ranch in the country. When Pridey dies, Jocelyn is engulfed with grief, and her friends agree that she needs a distraction. But Jocelyn is far from fragile: gorgeous, confident, energetic, and bossy, she’s the engine that drives the book club.
Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) is Jocelyn’s lifelong friend; they even dated the same guy back in high school. Daniel (Jimmy Smits) ended up married to Sylvia over 25 years and three children. But when Daniel, a public-affairs lawyer, breaks the news to Sylvia that he has fallen in love with another woman, Sylvia is devastated. She was completely unaware of any discontent in their marriage. Daniel seeks renewal, a fresh new relationship to replace one gone stale with time and familiarity.
Sylvia and Daniel’s daughter, Allegra (Maggie Grace), 20ish, initially joins the book club just to support her mom; at loose ends romantically and professionally, Allegra has moved back into the family home to keep Sylvia company. Pretty, sporty, and easy-going on the surface, in matters of love Allegra is prone to passions and drama-themes to delve into in her Austen readings and discussions. She’s comfortably open about her sexuality (she’s gay), but hides from her mother that she’s into extreme sports (she skydives, kayaks, and rock climbs).
Quite the opposite of easy-going is Prudie (Emily Blunt), whose neuroses are perilously close to the surface. A young high school French teacher who’s never been to France, Prudie is newly married to Dean (Marc Blucas), who has just cancelled their much-anticipated trip to Paris because of a business conflict. Dean is good-looking and loving, but his Average Joe sports-buff persona is an apparent mismatch for Prudie’s sharp intellect and emotional neediness.
That neediness leads back to Prudie’s mother SKY (Lynn Redgrave), a relentlessly irresponsible aging-hippie pothead. All this makes Prudie vulnerable to a most inappropriate infatuation with flirtatious high-school senior TREY (Kevin Zegers), who flusters Prudie with his bad-boy attentions. When Bernadette meets Prudie by chance, she spots her fragility, takes her under her mother-hen wing, and invites her to join the Jane Austen Book Club.
The sixth member of the Jane Austen Book Club-and the only male-is Grigg (Hugh Dancy), a geeky-cute techy in his early 30s whom Jocelyn meets in an elevator when her dog breeders’ convention shares a hotel with his sci-fi fan convention. Jocelyn eyes Grigg as a potential younger-man diversion for Sylvia, but she’s oblivious to the obvious: that Grigg’s interest is focused on Jocelyn herself. He’s just too nice and self-effacing to make much fuss about it.
Each month, the Jane Austen Book Club meets to discuss one of Austen’s novels, at Jocelyn’s pretty old farmhouse, or Sylvia’s comfortable family home in town, or Grigg’s spanking-new suburban tract house that’s surprisingly full of personality on the inside. The book club even squeezes into a Starbuck’s and a hospital room, and enjoys a beach outing in honor of an Austen seaside setting.
Austen is the thread that runs through their interconnected lives, as the book club members play out their own stories: the dissolution of Sylvia’s settled, married life, and the reinvention of a new Sylvia. The daredevil Allegra who lacks caution in sports and love. The yoga-centered Bernadette, seemingly content to look after everybody else’s emotional well-being. Will Prudie figure out how to be a married grownup, or will she chuck it all for an illicit fling? And will Jocelyn ever get over her literary snobbishness and read the Ursula LeGuin sci-fi classics that Grigg keeps urging her to try? As always in Austen, marriage, friendship, and finding one’s rightful place in the world are the things that really matter.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)
Directed by: Robin Swicord
Starring: Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman, Hugh Dancy, Maggie Grace, Kevin Zegers, Lynn Redgrave, Kathy Baker, Marc Blucas, Catherine Schreiber, Parisa Fitz-Henley
Screenplay by: Robin Swicord
Production Design by: Rusty Smith
Cinematography by: John Toon
Film Editing by: Maryann Brandon
Costume Design by: Johnetta Boone
Set Decoration by: Meg Everist
Art Direction by: Sebastian Schroder
Music by: Aaron Zigman
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content, brief strong language and drug use.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: September 21, 2007
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