Miss Austen Regrets (BBC) [2008] - DVD (Olivia Williams, Greta Scacchi, Hugh Bonneville, Jack Huston - Dir: )

A BBC costume drama that focuses in on author Jane Austen as she heads towards her 40s, Miss Austen Regrets is a fine piece of television, grounded by a terrific performance from Olivia Williams (best remembered still for her supporting role in The Sixth Sense).

Miss Austen Regrets finds the title character at a point where her writing career has already proved to be a success. However, there's the small matter of romance, which throws up a key paradox: given that Austen's books deal with the matter so well, how has she failed to properly address it in her personal life?

It's an interesting dynamic for a drama, and it works particularly well. Miss Austen Regrets finds her considering some of her past choices, and whether she's made the right choices along the way. And buoyed by the aforementioned Williams and Imogene Poots as her young niece, it makes for highly enjoyable and rewarding television.

Miss Austen Regrets sits happily alongside the recent film Becoming Jane as an interesting and well-measured dig into the author's life. And with good production values matched by a fine cast, it proves worthy not just as a fine drama, but the kind that'll be enjoyed time after time. Recommended. --Jon Foster

Customer Reviews of Miss Austen Regrets (BBC) [2008]

Lilly Augusta
Belgrade,Serbia
10th September 2008

Terrible!
This is one of the worst films I've seen in my life!When you are watching it,you absolutely can't stand Jane,who is presented sometimes as a mean and sometimes as an old spinster.The worst thing about the film is the way it was shot.Director did a poor job,especially when characters are walking,or dancing because it's like camera is moving as well,so sometimes it was so bad for my eyes.After you watched this film the only conclusion is that Jane Austen was a sad little creature-a plain Jane.

cathy earnshaw
Berlin, Germany
30th August 2008

"Fanny, listen to your own heart now --"
This production was a genuine surprise. As a biopic of the later years of Jane Austen's life as she approaches 40 and of her niece Fanny as she approaches marriage, it doesn't always stick to (what is assumed to be) the truth and allows itself a rather obvious dig at 'Becoming Jane'. Yet it is a much more intelligent work than that overblown and toe-curling biographical portrait. Refreshingly, it centres on the female relationships in Austen's life (although there is of course a lot of talking about men and marriage and some "profligate and shocking dancing and sitting down together").

Imogen Poots plays Fanny brilliantly, as does Hugh Bonneville in the role of Reverend Brook Bridges. I found Olivia Williams played Austen too manneredly and self-consciously, but the choice could have been a lot worse (after the horrors of Hathaway). Williams is - like Hathaway - also a good deal too pretty to be believable as Austen; "She was not generally considered handsome," as Claire Tomalin writes in her biography of the author. It is odd (but in commercial terms, clear) why famous female writers almost always have to be represented in film and TV productions as beautiful. Do producers and directors really think that viewers wouldn't be able to stomach an average-looking woman in the role?

Austen had more sensibility in this version of events than is traditionally imagined to have been the case and is portrayed as flitting somewhat melodramatically between melancholy, self-righteous anger and sparkling wit (most believe her to have lived a staid and rather boring - or at least uneventful - life). This was an Austen who played to our modern sensibilities without offending our traditional sensibilities to an absurd degree. The closing scenes are stunning and emotional as Austen nears an early death. You feel the same way as this Cassandra does after Jane has read her the final drafts of 'Emma', when she turns to her sister and says, "I don't know how you can sit there with dry eyes."

Worth watching!

ManxTog
Douglas, Isle of Man
3rd May 2008

Too sick to marry?
This excellent and entertaining film unfortunately misses out a lot of medical evidence that could explain why Jane chose not to marry. She was a late child, being 4 weeks overdue, and would have been frail and ill in the first weeks of life, her christening in church being delayed for almost 4 months. Postmaturity can lead to immune deficiency in later life and at the age of Jane developed chronic conjunctivitis which recurred throughout her life. In 1813 she began to suffer from neuralgia, an extremely painful condition affecting the cheek and upper jaw, and Fanny Knight's younger sister Lizzie described how sometimes she saw Aunt Jane walking along the path from Chawton village to the Great House, and obviously in pain, "with head a little to one side, and sometimes a very small cushion pressed against her cheek, if she were suffering from face-ache, as she not unfrequently did in later life". One medical text describes the pain as "devastating", and that for some patients who suffer frequent attacks, "the pain may be so intolerable as to make life a burden". Jane's final illness if often diagnosed as Addison's disease, but this does not explain the night sweats she reported, which are a feature of Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Jane's description of her face in March, 1817, as being 'black and white and every wrong colour' is typical of Addison's disease". The hyperpigmentation or tanning of the skin associated with Addison's disease, however, is inconsistent with her being described as "very pale" shortly afterwards in April. Cope also suggests that "there is no disease other than Addison's disease that could present a face that was "black and white" and at the same time give rise to the other symptoms described in her letters". He had overlooked Hodgkin's disease. Idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura, is a rare syndrome associated with Hodgkin's and is a complication that may occur in the advanced or terminal stage of the disease. It may affect the face and can be devastating to the patient. The symptoms begin with a scattering of red spots, which gradually progress to purple, then darken again, and in some cases turning black. A few days later the spots gradually begin to resolve, and change in colour like a bruise, turning green before fading to a yellowish brown and disappearing. This is consistent with Jane's letter of 25 March describing her looks as "recovering again," and in April, they had gone completely when she was described as "very pale." The "black and white and every wrong colour" of her face describes this process in contrast to the underlying severe anaemia. New crops may soon appear and the process begins again, and in Jane's letter of 27 May, the purpura had returned.

So it may be that Jane had an unconscious sense that she was not strong enough to withstand the rigours of child-bearing and wanted to live with the support of her family.

Blackjack Davy
somewhere in the UK
2nd May 2008

The closest to the real Jane and the best biopic... so far
Any kind of dramatisation of Jane Austen's life is going to be a tough nut to crack. Enigmatic with almost no first hand descriptions of her or her personality and not even an official portrait so that no one knows for sure what she actually looked like (you think you do know, but the image you have of Austen in your mind is almost certainly the product of a victorian artist's imagination) Austen's uneventful life is not exactly the stuff that dramas are usually made of.

This production makes an admirable stab at the attempt however. Olivia Williams is well cast (just the right age, and good enough an actress to carry the role) of the later Jane in the last year and a half of her life (Williams may be be better known to Jane afficionados as playing the part of Jane Fairfax in ITV's dramatisation of "Emma" 10 years or so ago). She makes surely the performance of her life here. Simply wonderful.

I was impressed the script writer's obvious knowledge of the subject and the extensive use of quotes from Jane's letters, and even Cassandra's "She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow" quote from the letter written to Fanny immediately after Jane's death.

If you've read Austen's letters and the few eye witness accounts of her you'll be impressed with the faithfullness of the depiction of Jane. Olivia's Jane was witty with a well developed sense of humour, with also a cleverness that reminded me of the letters, and a "keen sense of humour... (that) oozed out of her, very much in Mr Bennet's style", as someone who knew her later recalled. On the whole I'd say it was about 80% accurate to what I'd imagined her to be like. Perhaps not quite clever enough, and not quite witty enough, to be entirely the Jane of the letters, but a pretty good representation nonetheless.

Jane mercilessly mocks the Prince Regent's chaplain the Revd James Stanier Clarke and dazzles everyone with her brilliance, and looses more than a few caustic barbs. Almost all of which is quoted almost verbatim from her letters and other writings. And this is were the film succeeds best of all: it does convey something of her brilliance and wit, as well her intimidating intellect.

In the film she hides behind a mask of her own indifference to affairs of the heart, but there are enough chinks in her armour especially with her interest in Mr Haden to suggest that she was as vunerable to a charming handsome rogue as any of her heroines and had he made a move... well, lets just say I don't think she would have remained unmoved. Which all makes for some wonderful fiction, but fiction and speculation it remains.

The most powerful, and fictional, scene in the film is where her mother confront her over her failure to accept Harris Bigg's offer of marriage which dramatises possibly the biggest conundrum in Austen's life: why did she accept an offer of marriage from Harris Wither? Sure, she rejected him because she didn't love him, that we can understand, but why did she accept him in the first place? In this dramatisation the reason is given that Cassandra couldn't bear to be parted from her sister and so persuaded her to change her mind. Now, I don't believe that that to be true in this instance, but it does dramatise an argument for Jane's never marrying: could she ever have bared to be parted from the single most important person in her entire life? (Her dalliance of 20 years earlier with Tom Lefroy is briefly mentioned, but the stating here that he meant nothing to her that he was "not the one", is something I also fundamentally disagree with. It also dramatises her somewhat distant relationship with her mother: distant emotionally, even if physically and probably uncomfortably, close.

After some unrealistic dramatisations of Austen's life recently recently I really wasn't expecting too much from this at all, but I was pleasantly surprised. From initially expecting something very dull and ordinary instead I found something very fine, powerful, moving and ultimately very sad. Just as any depiction of Jane's later life should be.

izumi
Worcs
1st May 2008

Austen - the pain behind her words
JANE AUSTEN REGRETS is the latest period drama offering from the BBC. As a fan of period drama, and some of Austen's novels, I thought this would be an interesting insight into the lady behind the words.

JANE AUSTEN REGRETS shows us Jane during a relatively small period in her life, as she is approaching 40 and is still unmarried. Jane's niece, Fanny Kinght, who is young, beautiful and eager to fall in love, cannot beleieve that Jane would be able to write novels such as "Pride and Predjudice" without having experienced love herself. And so Fanny seeks Jane's opinion in matters of the heart - perticularly whether she should accept a proposal from a certain Mr. Plumbtree if he ever makes the offer.
Yet, for some reason, Fanny's love affair and her deliberations seem to shake Jane. Usually safe behind her clever words and strong views about love and marriage, Jane seems to be hiding something - not only to her young niece but also to herself.
So, JANE AUSTEN REGRETS becomes a mini exploration of Austen's heart. The proposal she turned down; the man who she seems to love but has wasted the chance; and the cracks in her armour which suggest that she longs for a more intimate relationship with a man.

Olivia Williams does a fantastic job at playing Jane, bringing us a portrayal of her which makes her very life-like. Instead of playing her as a two dimensional character, Williams really brings her to life, showing that there were aspects to her personality which are not so likebale. But you also see why this is so. In this adaptation, Austen comes across as someone who is able to hide behind her clever words and her strong opinions on love and marriage, but who deep down wants to have the same kind of love that she is so able to create in her pieces of fiction.
The other actors/actresses also were fantastic. Jane's mum does a brilliant job towards the end of the series as she vents her own frustration towards her unmarried daugther, illustrating the pressures that would have been on her when she made her decision.

I found this adaptation to be very well acted and heart-felt. Although I have not seen the adaptation of Austen's earlier life, "Bedoming Jane", having seen this it has now made me more eager to do so.
I loved it - just like Austen's best works, there are moments of pure beauty as the subject of love and matters of the heart are discussed, showing just how rewarding or painful it can be.