Jane Austen Lives On.

I want to read all of Jane Austen's books.
I want to join a book club.
I want to read my summer away.
I want to fall in love.

These are the thoughts that echo through my head after finishing the two-hour, The Jane Austen Book Club movie. I watched the movie alone, in my room, in my nifty little theater setup (my queen-sized bed faces the dresser that is topped with a DVD player and small, flat-screen TV). Now before you exit out of this browser or decide to find a more noteworthy blog to read, realize that The Jane Austen Book Club movie is not filled with proper English men and woman prancing around at balls and falling in love like her books seem to overflow with. And for the record, from the experience I have with Jane Austen, that is a TERRIBLE description of her novels, but that topic is for another day.

WARNING: Spoilers included.

The Jane Austen Book Club is set in a present-day, New York City-type city, filled with numerous Starbucks Coffee shops, suburbs, yellow taxis, and an airport. Yet, as the story goes on, one might think the story could take place in any sort of community...even one's own. The Jane Austen Book Club is made up of complicated people, a few strangers, but several interconnected. A mother, who's husband just left her for a woman from the office after many years of happy marriage; her free-spirited, lesbian daughter; a family friend, completely obsessed with dogs and completely not obsessed with men; a science-fiction loving man the dog lover invites to distract the divorcee from her problems at home; an older family friend, looking for a man to make her seventh husband; and a stubborn and serious high school French teacher, who is in love with a male student, fights constantly with her uninterested husband, and solely desires to be the opposite of her psychotic, suicidal mother.

The themes the movie addresses are mature: suicide, gay couples, divorce, affairs, etc..., yet grippingly real. The movie speaks volumes, I believe, because the themes are so grippingly real. Today, everyone in the world could relate to one of the many themes, if not perfectly identify with one or more of them. The trick The Jane Austen Book Club uses is the double theme-identifying within the movie. As the group peruses through the six Austen novels--each member responsible for leading the discussions on one--characters draw conclusions, opinions, and themes from the novels based on their own, current situations at home. The lesbian lover sees Austen characters' problems occuring because one or more of them are secretly gay and afraid to admit it. The divorced housewife despises every mention of love, marriage, or forever, and the science-fiction lover simply relates everything to his science-fiction books, a topic the women have a hard time relating to.

As the movie unfolds, the viewer becomes enveloped and involved in each of the characters' lives. The Austen characters remain elusive, unless familiar with each novel, but the Book Club members become close friends to the viewer, as the director forces one to feel the pain Trudy--the French teacher--feels as she attends her own mother's funeral only to witness her elusive husband 'hitting on' a former class rival of Trudy's.

So, in a society filled with sappy, predictable chic flicks such as the most recent, Letters to Juliet, viewers may find hope in a realistic, surprising film. Never fear, however, all ends happily. That is, if you're alright with a woman being married seven times, premarital sex, and gay couples--three aspects of the ending I would definitely have changed.