Art imitates art in 'Becoming Jane'

Which means it's time for a movie about Jane Austen: "Becoming Jane," starring Anne Hathaway as a young and ardent Hampshire lass quietly honing her art. Directed by Julian Jarrold ("Kinky Boots"), it falls squarely in the "Shakespeare in Love" genre, taking us behind closed doors with the great figures of literature. It's not bad, either -- lushly mounted, well played, pleasing to the eye and ear. Girls (and other people) who like the Austen movies and miniseries but haven't yet progressed to the novels will love it. But it's not Jane.

The conceit of Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams's screenplay is that all the elements of "Pride and Prejudice" were there in Austen's early life, ready to be transmuted into finely-spun gold. Jane's mother (Julie Walters) is a fusspot obsessed with marrying her daughters up the social ladder; father (James Cromwell) is a daydreamer better at emotional support than financial. A clumsy, lovestruck divinity student (Leo Bill) is a template for Mr. Collins. A wealthy grande dame (Maggie Smith) will become Lady Catherine de Bourgh. At times, "Becoming Jane" seems less homage than outright remake.

On top of all this literary influencing the movie lays a romance with a Darcy prototype. An arrogant young London barrister named Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy) visits the Austen household -- he's a friend of Jane's rakish soldier brother Henry (Joe Anderson) -- and scorns the girl's attempts at writing. (For good reason; the tribute Jane reads at her sister's engagement party is wordy and twee.) A meeting in the woods stiffens the pair's backs further. In Austen-land that can only mean love is around the next piece of topiary.

We know, of course, that Austen never married, and historical evidence of a romance with the real Lefroy is scanty and inconclusive. Anyway, by casting McAvoy the movie can't help but set Jane up for disappointment; the star of "The Last King of Scotland" does charming blue-eyed spinelessness better than any young actor out there.