Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #475 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-04-28
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Formats: Colour, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 85 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A BBC costume drama that focuses in on author Jane Austen as she heads towards her 40s, Miss Austen Regrets is a fine piece of television, grounded by a terrific performance from Olivia Williams (best remembered still for her supporting role in The Sixth Sense).

Miss Austen Regrets finds the title character at a point where her writing career has already proved to be a success. However, there’s the small matter of romance, which throws up a key paradox: given that Austen’s books deal with the matter so well, how has she failed to properly address it in her personal life?

It’s an interesting dynamic for a drama, and it works particularly well. Miss Austen Regrets finds her considering some of her past choices, and whether she’s made the right choices along the way. And buoyed by the aforementioned Williams and Imogene Poots as her young niece, it makes for highly enjoyable and rewarding television.

Miss Austen Regrets sits happily alongside the recent film Becoming Jane as an interesting and well-measured dig into the author’s life. And with good production values matched by a fine cast, it proves worthy not just as a fine drama, but the kind that’ll be enjoyed time after time. Recommended. --Jon Foster

DVD Description
Olivia Williams, Greta Scacchi and Hugh Bonneville lead an all-star cast in BBC One’s feature-length period drama Miss Austen Regrets.

Beautifully shot and graced with a splendid performance by Olivia Williams, this Jane Austen biopic focuses on a relatively narrow window in the author’s life, serving as something of a companion to Becoming Jane, the 2007 film about a young Austen starring Anne Hathaway.

This drama depicts a passionate and emotional chapter of Jane Austen’s romantic life, inspired by the great writer’s own novels, letters and diaries.

As Jane Austen approaches her 40s, her success as a writer is assured and her witty and sharply observed romantic novels are widely admired. To her niece, Fanny Knight – a young, pretty girl desperate to fall in love – Jane is a favourite aunt who offers the wisdom and knowledge to help her in her own search for a happy marriage.

Yet, when asked by Fanny to help her vet potential husbands, Jane's usual confident composure is threatened. Surely the woman so capable of writing love on the page must have experienced love herself, so why did she never marry?

Protected by her wit, Jane has presented a front as dazzling as many of her novels' young heroines, but as she reflects on her own romantic encounters and affairs, we are drawn into the passions, suitors and choices of her life – the cruel flirting, the proposals spurned and the love that seemed to arrive too late.

As she recalls missed opportunities, the doubts arise. Did she make the right choice for herself and her family? Could the great romantic expert have been mistaken? And, could her principles about love and marriage possibly have been ill-judged?

Starring:
Jane Austen - Olivia Williams
Fanny Austen-Knight - Imogene Poots
Cassandra - Greta Scacchi
Harris Bigg - Samuel Roukin
Rev. Brook Bridges - Hugh Bonneville
Charles Haden - Jack Huston

Written by Gwyneth Hughes. Directed by Jeremy Lovering. Produced by Anne Pivcevic and Jamie Laurenson.

Synopsis
A passionate and emotional story of Jane Austen’s romantic life, inspired by the great writer’s own novels, letters and diaries. As Jane Austen approaches her forties, her success as a writer is assured and her witty and sharply observed romantic novels are widely admired. To her niece, Fanny Knight – a young, pretty girl desperate to fall in love – Jane is a favourite aunt who offers the wisdom and knowledge to help her in her own search for a happy marriage. Yet, when asked by Fanny to help her vet potential husbands, Jane's usual confident composure is threatened. Surely the woman so capable of writing love on the page must have experienced love herself, so why did she never marry?

Protected by her wit, Jane has presented a front as dazzling as many of her novels' young heroines, but as she reflects on her own romantic encounters and affairs, we are drawn into the passions, suitors and choices of her life – the cruel flirting, the proposals spurned and the love that seemed to arrive too late. As she recalls missed opportunities, the doubts arise. Did she make the right choice for herself and her family? Could the great romantic expert have been mistaken? And, could her principles about love and marriage possibly have been ill-judged?

Customer Reviews

Terrible!
This is one of the worst films I've seen in my life!When you are watching it,you absolutely can't stand Jane,who is presented sometimes as a mean and sometimes as an old spinster.The worst thing about the film is the way it was shot.Director did a poor job,especially when characters are walking,or dancing because it's like camera is moving as well,so sometimes it was so bad for my eyes.After you watched this film the only conclusion is that Jane Austen was a sad little creature-a plain Jane.

"Fanny, listen to your own heart now --"
This production was a genuine surprise. As a biopic of the later years of Jane Austen's life as she approaches 40 and of her niece Fanny as she approaches marriage, it doesn't always stick to (what is assumed to be) the truth and allows itself a rather obvious dig at 'Becoming Jane'. Yet it is a much more intelligent work than that overblown and toe-curling biographical portrait. Refreshingly, it centres on the female relationships in Austen's life (although there is of course a lot of talking about men and marriage and some "profligate and shocking dancing and sitting down together").

Imogen Poots plays Fanny brilliantly, as does Hugh Bonneville in the role of Reverend Brook Bridges. I found Olivia Williams played Austen too manneredly and self-consciously, but the choice could have been a lot worse (after the horrors of Hathaway). Williams is - like Hathaway - also a good deal too pretty to be believable as Austen; "She was not generally considered handsome," as Claire Tomalin writes in her biography of the author. It is odd (but in commercial terms, clear) why famous female writers almost always have to be represented in film and TV productions as beautiful. Do producers and directors really think that viewers wouldn't be able to stomach an average-looking woman in the role?

Austen had more sensibility in this version of events than is traditionally imagined to have been the case and is portrayed as flitting somewhat melodramatically between melancholy, self-righteous anger and sparkling wit (most believe her to have lived a staid and rather boring - or at least uneventful - life). This was an Austen who played to our modern sensibilities without offending our traditional sensibilities to an absurd degree. The closing scenes are stunning and emotional as Austen nears an early death. You feel the same way as this Cassandra does after Jane has read her the final drafts of 'Emma', when she turns to her sister and says, "I don't know how you can sit there with dry eyes."

Worth watching!

Too sick to marry?
This excellent and entertaining film unfortunately misses out a lot of medical evidence that could explain why Jane chose not to marry. She was a late child, being 4 weeks overdue, and would have been frail and ill in the first weeks of life, her christening in church being delayed for almost 4 months. Postmaturity can lead to immune deficiency in later life and at the age of Jane developed chronic conjunctivitis which recurred throughout her life. In 1813 she began to suffer from neuralgia, an extremely painful condition affecting the cheek and upper jaw, and Fanny Knight's younger sister Lizzie described how sometimes she saw Aunt Jane walking along the path from Chawton village to the Great House, and obviously in pain, "with head a little to one side, and sometimes a very small cushion pressed against her cheek, if she were suffering from face-ache, as she not unfrequently did in later life". One medical text describes the pain as "devastating", and that for some patients who suffer frequent attacks, "the pain may be so intolerable as to make life a burden". Jane's final illness if often diagnosed as Addison's disease, but this does not explain the night sweats she reported, which are a feature of Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Jane's description of her face in March, 1817, as being 'black and white and every wrong colour' is typical of Addison's disease". The hyperpigmentation or tanning of the skin associated with Addison's disease, however, is inconsistent with her being described as "very pale" shortly afterwards in April. Cope also suggests that "there is no disease other than Addison's disease that could present a face that was "black and white" and at the same time give rise to the other symptoms described in her letters". He had overlooked Hodgkin's disease. Idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura, is a rare syndrome associated with Hodgkin's and is a complication that may occur in the advanced or terminal stage of the disease. It may affect the face and can be devastating to the patient. The symptoms begin with a scattering of red spots, which gradually progress to purple, then darken again, and in some cases turning black. A few days later the spots gradually begin to resolve, and change in colour like a bruise, turning green before fading to a yellowish brown and disappearing. This is consistent with Jane's letter of 25 March describing her looks as "recovering again," and in April, they had gone completely when she was described as "very pale." The "black and white and every wrong colour" of her face describes this process in contrast to the underlying severe anaemia. New crops may soon appear and the process begins again, and in Jane's letter of 27 May, the purpura had returned.

So it may be that Jane had an unconscious sense that she was not strong enough to withstand the rigours of child-bearing and wanted to live with the support of her family.