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Herald rating: 3 out of 5
Anne Hathaway does a perfectly acceptable, enchanting job of playing Jane.
It's best to approach this biographical drama about author Jane Austen as another piece of Austen's fiction.
Like the recently released Miss Potter, the biography of Beatrix Potter, Becoming Jane focuses on portraying a likeable young woman in a charming, warm and witty manner, rather than a gritty, revealing, or accurate portrayal of one of England's most treasured authors.
We meet Jane as a creative and energetic young woman, living at home in rural Hampshire with her parents Reverend Austen (James Cromwell) and his wife (Julie Walters).
Her sister Cassandra (Anna Maxwell Martin) is engaged, and Jane is doing her best to avoid a potential betrothal to Mr Wisley (Laurence Fox), the dull and awkward nephew of snobbish Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith).
At Cassandra's engagement party, Jane reads one of her poems aloud, only to be scoffed at by visiting Irishman Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy).
The extent of Lefroy and Austen's real life friendship is questionable, but in Becoming Jane their relationship is embellished and becomes a passionate romance and the centre of this story, hinting at how Austen's writings were inspired by her own life.
The only problem is you feel you've seen this movie before. It's like watching a slightly different version of Pride and Prejudice. Lefroy is Mr Darcy to Jane's Lizzy Bennet, Jane's family the perfect substitute for the Bennets, Lady Gresham is Lady Catherine de Bourg, and so on.
American Anne Hathaway does a perfectly acceptable, even enchanting, job of playing Jane.
While this is Hathaway's most mature performance to date, she will no doubt help to attract a younger audience to Austen's works.
While the story drags at times, any fan of this genre will surely enjoy this film. And apart from the liberties taken with the details of her personal life, this film contains little to offend Austen fans. Becoming Jane is like a formulaic Jane Austen adaptation, filled with Austen-like prose and wit, period costume, charming and spirited characters, and a focus on the class structure and the restrictions of life in the late-18th century.
Cast: Maggie Smith, Anne Hathaway, Julie Walters, James McAvoy
Director: Julian Jarrold
Running time: 120 mins Rating: PG, sexual references
Screening: SkyCity, Hoyts and Berkeley from May 31
Verdict: Twenty minutes shorter and it might have been truly fabulous
