English director adapts his story

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

NEW YORK -- Julian Jarrold is a sucker for punishment.

There's no other explanation for the English director's choice of projects.

His first feature film, 2005's "Kinky Boots," was about a Northampton shoemaker who attempts to save the family business by starting a line of fetish footwear.

He's currently filming "Brideshead Revisited," an adaptation of the much-loved novel by Evelyn Waugh, which has already been made into a much-loved British miniseries.

His second feature, "Becoming Jane," which opened in U.S. theaters recently, marks the first time the most beloved English author after Shakespeare is portrayed on-screen. For this first, Mr. Jarrold has chosen to tell a mostly fictionalized tale that turns Jane Austen the spinster into the heroine of the kind of love story she is famous for writing.

The 47-year-old director admits he was nervous about how his film would be received.

"Jane Austen fans were the most cautious before the film came out but generally have been the most positive," he reports.

Mr. Jarrold marvels at the author's continuing popularity. "I think every generation discovers her anew and finds different things in her," he says. "Obviously it's the romance that's the big draw, but it's the sort of clearsighted portrayal of that romance with all its flaws and disappointments and unromanticized wit, caustic wit, actually, that makes them constantly live again for people. Certainly so many movies, even modern movies, 'Bridget Jones' and all the rest, have used it."

Mr. Jarrold has certainly rethought the author. While most critics see the film's love interest, Irish law student Tom Lefroy, as a precursor of the favorite Austen hero, Mr. Darcy, the character actually has much more in common with those Austen cads Wickham and Willoughby.

"That's one of the things that Jane Austen was fascinated by," Mr. Jarrold says. "In all the novels, there's this roguish dark stranger who's sexy and attractive and not to be relied upon." The film is, in part, an answer to the question of where this recurring cad comes from.