A Parisian Dream for Chéryl in ‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life’

 

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life’s side character Chéryl (Annabelle Lengronne) inspired thoughts. DP: Pierre Mazoyer.

Shakespeare & Co., one of my favorite places to visit in Paris, is a whole dreamy, otherworldly realm. This charming bookstore contains organized book sections and beguiling stairs leading towards sweet mysteries, overall presenting the best place to lose oneself. My old supreme goal was to have a published book in fiction and my framed picture included among the famous authors wall. Long ago, the bookstore even held an unorthodox residency— spend nights at the bookstore and write a required piece to include in their collection of past residents. 

Bookseller Agathe (Camille Rutherford) is the main character. DP: Pierre Mazoyer.

The shop’s an excellent other character in former employee Laura Piani’s feature length debut, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. The film dotes on Agathe, a burgeoning writer who doesn’t feel confident enough in her abilities, a trait we have in common. She’s confidently shelving books or reading the anonymous letters posted on the mirror for limerant bookworms and returns home to a pretty flat she shares with her sister and nephew. Unbeknownst to her, Félix, a coworker nicknamed “Breadcrumber,” secretly enters Agathe’s work into the selective Jane Austen Residency. 

She gets in. 

Wearing a cozy purple sweater with fetching dangled earrings touching her neck, Chéryl (Annabelle Lengronne) writes, a cup of tea nearby. DP: Pierre Mazoyer.

At the prestigious Jane Austen Residency located in a rustic French countryside, Agathe is joined with other writers including Chéryl, a poet. None of the residents are given backstories except Oliver, an Austen ancestor and his aunt and uncle that run the pleasant house for the occupants. Apparently, Oliver personally read and chose the winners. Chéryl must have been an exceptional candidate out of many and she likely wrote her application as opposed to Agathe. That is not to say that Agathe has no merit or right to be among the chosen few. 

Chéryl plays a romantic game with Agathe— another way to employ the character as a guiding point for Agathe’s conflicted heart. DP: Pierre Mazoyer.

An opened up Agathe has drinks and sings karaoke with Chéryl. DP: Pierre Mazoyer.

The residency hosts a special period soirée where the writers are invited to don clothing worn during Austen’s time. The lovely Chéryl helps prepare Agathe as though she’s her personal servant while the other ladies dress themselves in the background. The moment certainly draws back to historical contexts— Olympia by Èdouard Manet in the Musee D’Orsay (the other museum in Paris as famous as the Louvre) came to my mind, this performative act of kindness and servitude that further relegates the purpose of Chèryl’s character. At the soirée, Agathe dances twice (with the surprise visitor Fèlix) and Oliver while Chèryl doesn’t get the honor and there’s barely a shot of her full attire. 

Chéryl (Annabelle Lengronne) assists Agathe (Camille Rutherford) with her apricot colored dress. DP: Pierre Mazoyer.

Including lacing it up in the back. Hopefully, Agathe did the same for Chéryl. DP: Pierre Mazoyer.

A closeup of Madeleine the servant from Édouard Manet’s 1863 painting Olympia.

Agathe makes a decision that would devastate anyone who knows the difficulties of applying to residencies (especially abroad opportunities where odds are less than one percent). This leaves us on the abrupt end of Chéryl, the unsubtle incompleteness of the poet’s story. In my imagination, she has finished the requirements necessary for the residency, wishing goodbye to all the attendants and taking her own ferry back to her Paris. She too must work at a place where books live and breathe, a place as wondrously magical as Shakespeare & Co. Maybe she has a flat filled with plants, stuffed notebooks, and autumn sweaters, patterned tea cups and tea pots and lidded jams sit on her clean (or cluttered) counters, and a purple collared black cat awaits. She finds a healthy rhythm between the virtuous recluse and modern day freethinker, her heart yearning for prose alone. Her mailbox would be packed to the brim with love letters, love letters as precious as the ones posted on the Shakespeare & Co. mirror. 

Chéryl (Annabelle Lengbonne), Beth (Liz Crowther), and Agathe (Camille Rutherford). DP: Pierre Mazoyer.

I recommend Jane Austen Wrecked My Life for the delicious cinematography, the terrific score, and its ode to bookworms and sheltered writers. While Agathe and Oliver’s story had my romanticist insides swooning from the sensuous dance to the Mr. Darcy line, my heart still mourned for Chéryl’s potential, for what could never be told, only envisioned. Her talented, scene-stealing portrayer Annabelle Lengronne (known for her award-winning turn in Léonor Serraille’s Mother & Son) deserved more light to shine bright in, a story as vivid in rich as Alice Diop’s Saint Omer. In another world, we could definitely see the English professor / novelist Rama hitting it off with Chéryl, the poet, discussing modern Black women writing around Parisian landscapes as imperative as bookstores like Shakespeare & Co.