The trailer for Sony Pictures Classics’ Austenland is now online. Which looks actually nice seems like a nice and light movie not much like the heavy hitters we are seeing all this summer, It’s nice to slow down and enjoy the Costumes. I’m interested to see if the film has anything interesting to say about the world of intense fandom or if it just uses the premise as a set up for a love story.
Written by Jershua Hess and Shannon Hale and directed by Hess,Austenland stars Keri Russell, J.J. Feild, Bret McKenzie, James Callis, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Seymour and Rupert Vansittart and is based on Hale’s original novel about Jane Hayes, a seemingly normal young New Yorker with a secret. Her obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of “Pride & Prejudice,” is ruining her love life: no real man can compare.
But when a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women, Jane’s fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become realer than she ever could have imagined.
Decked out in empire-waist gowns, Jane struggles to master Regency etiquette and flirts with gardeners and gentlemen—or maybe even, she suspects, with the actors who are playing them. It’s all a game, Jane knows. And yet the longer she stays, the more her insecurities seem to fall away, and the more she wonders: Is she about to kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own?