Though no zombies are involved, the simultaneously ribbon-bowed and mud-splattered French feature still wants to pay homage to the titular author while also trying to do something more 21st-century with the largely familiar material. Writer-director Laura Piani has set herself a formidable challenge for her debut feature, as this requires the characters to be both old-fashioned romantics and feminist-realists, offering escapism but also a reality check. The resulting gymnastic split is occasionally a little uncomfortable, but also charming in an immediate, earthy way.
There is clearly a market for this kind of romantic comedy-drama, which recently sold to SPC for multiple territories including US in advance of its Tiff debut. Agathe (Camille Rutherford) works at the famous Shakespeare & Co bookshop in Paris, though she secretly hopes to one day publish her own novel. She’s not into dating apps, which are too modern and cold, and prefers to believe that she’ll simply run into the man of her dreams in real life.
Her cute colleague, Felix (Pablo Pauly), isn’t that principled — or is it delusional? — and sleeps around, though he also spends a suspicious amount of time at Agathe’s cramped apartment. Things kick into high gear when Agathe, after much prodding from Felix, accepts an unlikely writer’s residency in England organised by the estate of Jane Austen. Here, she is given the opportunity to work on a new novel she has just started — and which might be the firs.