French Rom-Com Revives the Spirit of Bridget Jones
DIRECTOR: LAURA PIANI/2025
Like many a Jane Austen heroine, Agathe believes she is past her prime.
Chronically single, unable to finish any novel she starts, and still reeling from a major loss, she feels stuck. Then an unexpected letter arrives while on shift at the famed Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris: She has been accepted to the Jane Austen Writers’ Residency in England. Her best friend Félix (Pablo Pauly) submitted her work on her behalf, and just before her departure, he reveals he’d be open to more than friendship. But what of the new gentleman running the Residency? Though Austen’s generations-removed-nephew Oliver (Charlie Anson) is cantankerous, his kind eyes suggest there’s more to him. For the first time since tragedy struck, Agathe (Camille Rutherford) will be forced to make decisions about her work and a chance for romance.
A heroine with a penchant for pen and paper? With a tendency for trips and falls? And who can’t kick her smoking habit? Welcome back, Bridget Jones! With all due respect to Ms. Austen and the inspiration she provided for Helen Fielding’s novels, the better title for this French-language romantic comedy would be Bridget Jones Wrecked My Life. (Félix even jokes Agathe is waiting for Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy himself.) Laura Piani’s debut feature strikes a tone more akin to the rom-com domination of the early 2000s than any period piece, and not just because of the profanity and nudity you wouldn’t expect from something with “Jane Austen” in the title. Trying to fix your life by traveling to the English countryside? The plot engine for 2006’s The Holiday. Being forced to sleep in a car with an attractive frenemy? A moment in 2008’s 27 Dresses. Accidental nakedness in front of a romantic interest? Also in 2009’s The Proposal. There’s a very good chance you thought of at least one other film that could have checked one of those boxes—these are tried and true genre tropes invented well before this century. As for that spitting llama? Well, that one might be new to the rom-com, though it does sound like something Bridget could’ve journaled about.
That said, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is plenty aware of the Austen’s work and the film adaptations preceding it. The Regency Ball at the Residency echoes the lighting and framing of 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, and the love triangle tears Agathe—a self-described Anne Elliot—between a Mr. Knightley and a Mr. Darcy. She calls Sense and Sensibility her favorite of the six completed novels, a nod to her close relationship with her sister. Agathe, though, still feels like a new creation, and Piani’s film does not become trapped in the archetypes it’s mirroring. That is partly because neither Félix nor Oliver is as well-developed as Austen’s suitors, but it’s also because Agathe’s crisis stems from grief and writer’s block. Elizabeth Bennet struggled financially and socially; Agathe instead struggles at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, searching for self-respect and her purpose as a flailing author.
When I saw Austenland at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013, director Jerusha Hess introduced it as film both for Jane Austen fans and for those who think her fans are funny. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is not so different, though it’s laughs are less hearty and satirical. You don’t need to be a fan of Austen to enjoy it because the European vacation vibes are consistently dreamy, the story is charming even when it’s familiar, and these characters are more grounded than in most rom-coms. It wouldn’t hurt, however, to be a fan of Bridget Jones.