The Jane Austen Book Club 2007

The Jane Austen Book Club

Well my recent posts on Hugh Dancy and Emily Blunt gave me a hankering for The Jane Austen Book Club. I know it is not high art. It obviously did not win any Oscars. And yet, what a great film to spend an evening with! So that is what I did this past weekend. I always feel that if my husband and my teenaged son sit down and watch a film with me, it can't be all that bad!

The film mingles tidbits of all six novels with six different main characters who read all of Jane Austen's novels again together (or for the first time in the case of the adorable Grigg) and meet once a month to discuss. The two Brits in the cast play Americans with wonderful accents. Intertwining bits of Austen's novels into the modern character's lives and personalities really works for me. And the fact that 5 women can take for granted that they have all read Jane Austen's books is awesome for a geek like me!!!

"Our world is an English village." 

Prudie

Prudie Drummond: He looks at me like he's the spoon, and I'm the dish of ice cream.

Jocelyn

Grigg Harris: Women never go for the nice guys.
Jocelyn: Please, men say that, but when you get to know some of these men who complain the most, you find out they're not as nice as they think they are.

Bernadette

Bernadette: All Jane Austen, all the time. It's the perfect antidote.
Prudie Drummond: To what?
Bernadette: To life.

Sylvia and Daniel

Jocelyn: Do you think he has a brain tumor?
Sylvia Avila: I think he fell in love.
Jocelyn: Well, I'm rooting for the brain tumor.

Allegra

Daniel Avila: Can we at least agree that human beings need human connection. You know... companionship, conversation, sex.
Allegra: You get those things from mom, Jocelyn gets those things from her dogs.

Grigg!!!!

Jocelyn: You know what I'm wondering before I go? How do you feel about older women?
Grigg Harris: Ah, great. I have three older sisters, so I like all women. 

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I still say Grigg is my fave part of this film, and apparently I have mellowed to the film over the last few years. I think I could easily watch it once a year, ad infinitum.

By the way, I still haven't read The Mysteries of Udolpho. And I actually screamed out loud when Grigg's phone rang with an R2D2 ringtone. Squee!!!!

And I am totally going to check out Ursula le Guin!

"Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter."