Written and Directed by Laura Piani | 98 min | ▲▲▲▲1/2 | Crave
Every once in awhile we get a performance that’s so electric you’re amazed how this fully fledged talent has appeared seemingly out of nowhere. That presumption is quickly diminished by a glance at the wealth of experience in the performer’s IMDB file, and further humbled when you realize you’ve actually seen them in other things and never recognized the particular talent. Maybe this is the moment when the material and the performance spark something undeniably special, where you sit up and take notice.
Camille Rutherford is an Anglo-French actor who’s a complete joy as Agathe, a Parisienne writer plugging away at her first novel in English while making ends meet working retail at Shakespeare and Company, the famous English-language bookstore on the Left Bank. Rutherford gives genuine Phoebe Waller-Bridge vibes — lean, dark-eyed and clumsy, with a stark vein of insecurity feeding her terrific comic timing.
Her best pal and coworker, Felix (Pablo Pauly), submits Agathe’s work to a writer’s retreat at the sprawling English estate owned by Jane Austen’s descendants, including Oliver (Charlie Anson), a somewhat cantankerous, Mark Darcy-esque character. Once accepted, Agathe has to overcome her imposter syndrome, come to terms with her lingering attraction to Felix, and her sudden interest in Oliver. Underneath all that is trauma she’s been living with from a car accident years before.
The film isn’t a direct Austen adaptation — Austen is the hook, while Agathe undeniably shares a few characteristics with an Austen heroine. One of its many pleasures is the film’s easy bilingualism. It’s mostly in French, but many of the English cast switch back and forth into French at the drop of a hat, which gives the film a delightful continental frisson — these are all smart, funny people worth wasting a little time with, from Agathe’s sister and son to the other writers at the retreat, some of them prickly, to Oliver’s oddball father, who enjoys wandering around the garden without his pants.
A character will sit down at the piano to play something beautiful and another character will join them for a duet. Wonderful. It’s also the most literary romance since Call Me By Your Name. It looks pretty good too, scenes of autumnal exteriors, Agathe cycling around Paris, a couple in bed, the sheets matching the wallpaper… plenty of incidental gifts.
There’s a moment or two in the last act where, despite a nearly flawless script, the film stutters slightly with some weird sound and a little questionable plotting around Agathe’s unresolved grief — it feels slightly rushed is all — but none of that is much of a bother given the otherwise ultra-charming tone and Rutherford’s phenomenal charisma.
Austen wrote, “If a book is well-written, I always find it too short.” I feel the same way about this film.
