Translated material
Feelings and sensitivity
British Film Week opens with Jane Austen
British Film Week is taking place in Moscow for the eighth time, and for the second time in a row it is opened by a film directed by Julian Jerrold. Last year, the public really liked his comedy about a crooked shoe factory, “Kinky Boots,” but now it’s in for a melodrama—for simplicity’s sake, the film is called “Jane Austen,” and its original title, Becoming Jane, could be translated as “Becoming Jane.” The day after the opening of the festival, absolutely everyone will be able to see the film - it will be released in Russia. And that is why the ceremony will be solemn: the leading actress, American actress Anne Hathaway, familiar to our viewers from the film “The Devil Wears Prado,” will come to Moscow and present the film herself.This tall, long-legged beauty, with a sensual mouth, large brown eyes and lush black hair, has luxurious forms, cat-like flexibility, she is irresistible and incredibly sexy. She has been compared to Audrey Hepburn and Julia Roberts. The trouble is that in the role of Jane Austen she also has to look like a writer, for which she utters several very tricky and obviously very witty lines that have a stunning effect not only on the negative characters of the picture, but also on the audience. The love story of two romantic but poor lovers could easily do without this pseudo-intellectual surroundings.
The fact is that in the English-speaking world Jane Austen is considered a truly great writer, while in Russia her novels are classified as “ladies' prose.” Therefore, for the British, for example, the biography of Austen can be as interesting as we are interested in, for example, Chekhov or Tolstoy. And the discovery made by her biographer in 2003 is the secret of Jane Austen’s only and eternal love (until now it was believed that the writer, who died at forty-four as an old maid, did not know love at all, and saw Tom Lefroy only once and simply flirted) -- shocked the cultural community so much that it sparked a new biographical film. And although this film contains a lot of direct quotes from numerous dramatizations of Jane Austen’s novels, and primarily from the most beloved series by all girls, “Pride and Prejudice,” perhaps for fans of the writer’s talent, reducing the history of her creative development to an unsuccessful love affair may seem simplistic and even profanation.
But for the Russian viewer, who is completely free from reverence, and at the same time, as a rule, from any knowledge of the work of England’s first popular prose writer, the story of a poor girl who fell in love but did not marry should evoke sincere sympathy. To ordinary spectators it may seem strange why the heroine with such contempt rejects the advances of a noble and wealthy lord, a tall, handsome blond, and what she finds in a completely undignified Irish boy with a dubious reputation and penniless... He argues with her about her talent, criticizes him for his lack of life experience and advises reading novels of dubious content (we are talking about Tom Jones, Foundling). In addition, he looks like the actor Kirill Pirogov, that is, he is not a lord at all. Nevertheless, they too could have been happy, but reason prevailed over feeling, and this discord has since become a source of inspiration for the pen, easily guiding its mocking and sweet heroines through the thorns of poverty to the heights of successful marriages and extraordinary wealth.
No matter how much you try, you can’t squeeze anything more out of this modest and touching story of two hearts that sacrificed happiness to conventions, and there’s no need to. It’s already pleasant - beautiful characters, many convincing little details, landscapes of rural England, mansions, ponds, declarations of love, walks through the woods - what could be more attractive to the tender female heart, which in cinema needs, above all, feelings and sensitivity.
It's only natural that the film's director, Julian Jerrold, would adapt Dickens' Great Expectations for the BBC. I wonder how he’s going to film Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” in such soft and sweet colors? However, they stopped talking about this project a long time ago; perhaps it never found completion.
In addition to the sentimental "Jane", the British Film Week will also show: the crime love story "Breaking and Entering" - a new film by Anthony Minghella ("The English Patient" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley"), starring Jude Law and Juliet Binoche; youth comedy “I want Candy” ; social drama about skinheads “This is England” by the young genius Shane Meadows, recognized as the best independent British film of 2006; musical melodrama “Getting in the Top Ten” ; “Vera Drake” by Mike Leigh is the famous and already shown once in Russia sad story of an independent supporter of abortion, dating back to 2004; "Red Road" is a thriller about voyeurism, directed by Oscar winner Andrea Arnold under the auspices of Lars von Trier's Centropa studio. There will also be documentaries; two films will be shown: “To Live Forever” - about the history of Britpop, and a biography of Scott Walker, produced by David Bowie, with the participation of himself (Scott Walker: XXX Century Man).
The festival, according to tradition, will begin on October 4 in Moscow, and then will be held in six more cities of Russia: Volgograd, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Omsk and Irkutsk.