Jane Austen’s Legacy Lives on in Rom-Coms

We owe the modern-day romantic comedy to Jane Austen.

Numerous tropes grew popular simply because Austen put pen to paper in the nineteenth century. Close, loose, and supremely loose adaptations in film and television stem from her novels. She paved the way for sharp, witty female authors, screenwriters, and the star English student who submitted her literary analysis essay two days early. Fittingly, we welcome another addition to the genre this month: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, originally titled Jane Austen a gâché ma vie, which hit French cinemas in January and marked its U.S. release on May 16.

Director Laura Piani’s first feature is a nod and a wink to Austen’s influence, andframes the romantic comedy genre as a “chicken or the egg” paradox rather than a simple cause-and-effect relationship. Jane Austen’s grand depictions of love weren’t meant to alienate us from what we don’t have, they were written to inspire us for what’s to come.

The life Jane Austen is wrecking? That would be an aspiring novelist by the name of Agathe Robinson, who compares herself to Persuasion’s Anne Elliot, musing, “She has let life pass her by.”

Teetering on a Bridget Jones-like singledom—a wink to the Jane Austen metaverse—Agathe daydreams her way through dinners for one, bike rides through Paris and work shifts shelving novels at the famed bookshop, Shakespeare and Company (notably featured in the 2004 film Before Sunset—a romantic drama with more than its share of Austenesque wit).

Agathe’s desires to experience a magnetic love and finish a manuscript are inextricably linked. As a romantic, she encounters countless dismissals of her idealism. Her sister, writing workshop teacher, and close friend, Félix all insist on taking the world as it is. Curled up in the corner of Shakespeare and Company, Agathe refuses to cooperate with modern life. Regarding dating apps, she sighs,  “I’m not living in the right century.”

Enter: A home from that “right century” she speaks of. Agathe receives an acceptance letter to the Jane Austen Writers’ Residency. The program houses writers working on pieces such as feminist manifestos, poetic fictions and romance stories, in the very home where Austen wrote her six novels. The writing residency is (devastatingly) fictional—only in the romantic comedy canon would a lead character accidentally walk naked into the room where Elizabeth Bennet was  spawned.

The program forces Agathe to examine the barriers she’s placed for herself. A trip abroad in the autumnal English countryside will do that to a woman.

And of course, in the name of Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma and every other romantic comedy produced, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life features the love triangle trope.

Rather than two hypermasculine men sparring for Agathe’s affection, Félix and Oliver don’t see each other as enemies. Félix, the longtime friend who’s ‘been there all along’ and Oliver, the intriguing great-great-great-great nephew of Jane Austen, are simply two men to champion Agathe along her journey rather than divert her from it.

It’s Félix who submits Agathe’s pages to the residency program and Oliver who coaxes her out of a fear-driven writer’s block. The two men are counterparts for men we’re quite familiar with, fictional and otherwise. Agathe directly compares Félix to Mansfield Park’s Henry Crawford. He’s devilishly charming and manages his way around a dating app just fine. Meanwhile, one only needs two minutes of watching Oliver, a brooding British gentleman, to know he’s a Mr. Darcy stand-in.

Piani frames Agathe’s love life as one of self-exploration and forgoes any side story spotlighting male competition. Agathe is the main character. This is her tale, and these are her mistakes, her spur-of-the-moment kisses, her post-karaoke hangovers. With Austen’s guidance, Piani responds thoughtfully to some of the reasonable critiques of the historically heteronormative romantic comedy genre by understanding the ways romance and comedy interact in the real world.

Perhaps there are fewer restrictions concerning land ownership now than there were in Austen’s time, but there are still innumerable societal pressures at play when it comes to romance. And just like every other person grappling with the difficulties of life, women—Austen and Piani included—turn to comedy for some respite.

Insulting an Englishman in French only to find he speaks the language too, clumsily making her way through idyllic woods and saying the worst thing she could possibly say at a breakfast table, demonstrate Agathe’s humor, yes, but also her humanity. What made Austen remarkable in her time continues to make her remarkable—an ability to write female protagonists who stay true to themselves and find love along the way.

This year marks milestone anniversaries for two beloved Austen adaptations. Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley and Matthew “hand flex” Macfadyen celebrates its twentieth year, while Clueless, the cult-teen-retelling of Emma that took the fashion world by storm turns thirty. With scripts written by Deborah Moggach and Amy Heckerling, respectively, these films hold the unofficial titles of the most cherished—and possibly most quoted Austen reiterations. Their staying power is a direct result of Moggach and Heckerling’s grasp of Austen’s wit, charm and innate understanding of love.

Austen’s stories will continue to endure no matter their restructuring. Whether a screenwriter, an actress with a vision or a woman uplifting a recently-dumped friend, the world appreciates someone who clearly recognizes how to make love’s woes more palpable. A good laugh revives the romantic and the cynic.

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life has the potential to join the ranks of Pride and Prejudice and Clueless, because it too, is told through the lens of a woman. The characters are both unique and familiar—your mothers, friends, sisters, teachers and classmates with impeccable style. The people who joke about that guy with bad manners. The ones who know it “gets better” because they’re able to chuckle about it now.

Hollywood will continue to make adaptations and the skepticism will be warranted. With the original stories so rich and beloved, it can be difficult to empathize with a filmmaker who thinks they can improve upon them. Old does not necessarily indicate worse and new doesn’t explicitly suggest better. But perhaps what Austen understood about women and their desire, complexity, value and humor is something worth continuing. A framework that simply builds upon itself as it builds its women.