Austenland
Directed by Jerusha Hess
“Austenland” is the disappointing directorial debut of Jerusha Hess, best known as the co-writer of “Napoleon Dynamite,” Nacho Libre” and “Gentlemen Broncos.” Starring Keri Russell, it tells the story of Jane Hayes, a devout fan of the works of Jane Austen. Jane is so enamored of Austen and her stories, that romance in the real world doesn’t live up to her hopes and fantasies and so she travels to England (via an airport that doesn’t have arrivals from the US – film trivia) to stay at Austenland, an immersive Jane Austen themed hotel.
Austenland specializes in providing lonely Austen fans with less than genuine storybook romances, and employs a cast of actors playing the parts of eligible young men of assorted means. It’s an interesting concept at some level but it doesn’t seem very well developed here. Perhaps just to keep the film simple, Austenland apparently has only three guests and none are especially sympathetic. Russell’s Jane doesn’t just come across as unlucky in love, she seems rather clueless as to what’s going on around her – and she’s still the winner of this unfortunate threesome.
One of the other guests is played by Jennifer Coolidge – and a little Jennifer Coolidge goes a long way, especially when she’s playing an overly crass American attempting, intermittently, an appallingly bad English accent. And here we’re given a lot of Jennifer Coolidge. It’s a character portrayal that could perhaps provide occasional comic relief, but which isn’t suited to being the supporting role. Meanwhile, we see relatively little of the matronly leader of Austenland, Mrs. Wattlesbrook, played by the far better Jane Seymour.
But Jane isn’t much better. Russell’s performance is uneven and whereas a film like this needs a main character that audiences can either identify with or aspire to be, she isn’t made to be especially likeable. Instead of rooting for Jane to find love at Austenland, I felt that in real life I might hope for her suitors’ sakes that she remain unlucky.
Austenland was an interesting idea with great potential, marred by the casting and by an uneven or poorly defined tone – it isn’t sincere enough to be meaningful, it isn’t offbeat enough to be full-on quirky, and it isn’t crass enough (outside of Coolidge) to be truly off-color. It feels a little like the work of a committee rather than a filmmaker with a clear vision. I’d like to visit a fantasy world where this film is better.-
The weekend program at the Sacramento Film & Music Festival
Last week, while reviewing new films, I also previewed the first two evenings of the 14th Annual Sacramento Film & Music Festival. That leaves an additional 10 events from this evening (Friday), to Sunday evening.
Friday night is Poe night. In keeping with today’s date, Friday the 13th, everything happening on Friday is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Several months ago, a joint program between the Capital Film Arts Alliance (CFAA) and the Sacramento Public Library was launched with local filmmakers and writers given a choice: Either make a short film or write a feature length screenplay, with Poe’s works as inspiration. Tonight the “Poe Project” comes to fruition, with the first public screening of the short films and the presentation of awards to the winners of each part of the program. More recently, the Capitol Indie Collective Fashion Challenge was launched, with designers and their teams being given 10 days to create original “Poe Couture.” This is the third year for the Fashion Challenge and previous years have seen red carpet fashion created from newspapers and fashion inspired by menu offerings from local restaurants. Doors open at 5:30pm, with the fashion Challenge at 6:00pm and the film screenings beginning at 7:00pm.
Saturday is the Festival’s longest day with approximately 12 hours of programming. The day starts at 11:30am with student films – and as with all of the main Festival screening programs, these are selected from a submission pool that includes films sent in from both the US and from around the world. Student films are followed by a program of International short films at 2:00pm. At 4:00pm, the first of two local filmmaking programs begins, with short films from regional filmmakers followed at 6:00pm by the 10th anniversary program of Sac Music Seen – a program matching local musicians with filmmakers to produce original music videos. The primetime screening at 8:00pm is a narrative feature about a drug smuggler. “Down and Dangerous” has already won awards on the festival circuit as has filmmaker Zak Forsman with earlier projects. Zak will be attendance to discuss the project which can serve as a model for aspiring filmmakers, having largely been funded via a crowdsourcing campaign. “Down and Dangerous” is followed at 10:00pm by the final program of the day, a late night shorts program that includes films with darker themes than some of the daytime screenings.
Sunday is the Festival’s fifth and last day of events, wrapping up 103 films over that five day period. At 11:30am and 1:30pm, respectively, there are programs of documentary and narrative short films – with the narrative short films all domestically produced (to complement Saturday’s international program). The narrative feature at 3:30pm, “Home:____,” tells the story of one man’s struggle with mental illness as he tries to qualify to move out of a group home environment and back into an apartment of his own. The last screening of the Festival, at 6:00pm, is the 10×10 Filmmaker Challenge, which for 10 years has been a venue for local filmmakers, both novices and veterans, to come together and enjoy their creativity and art. The longest running of the local guerilla filmmaking programs, the 10×10 allows filmmakers 10 days to make a film of no more than 10 minutes on a given topic or using specific elements provided by the Festival directors. This year, given the 10th anniversary of the program, the primary them was “10” and film titles were required to include either the number 10 or the letters “ten” – so expect to see “tension” and “tenacity” or other variations on that them. Teams were also given the name of a specific director and instructed to include styles or elements in their films that would be reminiscent of the life or work of their assigned director. And so much of the fun of the event is to see how the themes and elements have influenced each team and their project. The Festival ends after the 10×10 in a party atmosphere, as filmmaking teams from throughout the five day run wait to find out who won the various jury and audience awards.
The full Festival schedule can be found at sacfilm.com. The student film program on Saturday costs $5 and all other screenings cost $10. Festival Passes are available at the Crest Theatre Box Office for $30, with student passes costing just $20 for all screenings.
