内容摘要：A worker uses an excavator to clear land for a road that would connect to the upper villages of Melamchi, northeast of Kathmandu, Nepal, on Sept. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

A worker uses an excavator to clear land for a road that would connect to the upper villages of Melamchi, northeast of Kathmandu, Nepal, on Sept. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Standards are great and all, but really, of course, it’s Agathe who has to get out of her own way. And she does, one night, in a sake-induced daze in which she dreams up the first couple of chapters of a romance. Her best friend Félix (Pablo Pauly) gives her the push she needs and secretly submits the pages to a Jane Austen writers residency, where she’s accepted and invited to spend a few weeks.Before she gets on the ferry (a hurdle in and of itself), Félix, a known serial dater and “breadcrumber,” kisses her. It’s the kind of development, a platonic friendship turned complicated, that’s enough to properly distract an already reluctant writer with an impostor complex. When she arrives, there’s another handsome distraction awaiting her: Oliver (Charlie Anson), a British literature professor and Austen’s “great great great great nephew” who thinks that the

author is overrated. Agathe doesn’t know he also speaks French until after she’s complained about his arrogance to her sister within his earshot.It’s a classic kind of setup, not exactly Mr. Darcy, but not not that either. Shared lodgings, even at a rather large, idyllic English estate, only ratchet up the will-they-won’t-they tension as they see each other everywhere: walks in the woods, breakfast, after-dinner readings. And it’s not without its slightly more cliche hijinks, like Agathe stripping down to nothing and opening a door to what she believes is the bathroom. It’s not.Piani has constructed a rare gem in “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” which manages to be literary without being pretentious. Its title is cheekily hyperbolic but has some truth to it as well.

are bound to disappoint but, in this environment, they can justify having a costumed ball. The event is a swoony, romantic affair where we get to see the love triangle play out in all its glorious awkwardness.But while “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” certainly qualifies as a romantic comedy, the question of whom she ends up with is kind of beside the point. Don’t worry, choices are made, but the way it plays out is both unexpected and gratifying — a clear-eyed portrait of why Agathe’s singledom is not the problem. There’s even a

Ultimately, this is a movie about a woman taking a bet on herself for perhaps the first time ever. Her actualization is not going to come through a boyfriend, a job or a makeover, but by sitting down and finally putting pen to paper. It may not be a strict adaptation, but it has Jane Austen’s soul.

“Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” a Sony Pictures Classics release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “some sexual content, nudity, language.” Running time: 94 minutes. Three stars out of four.Then it’s 1999, and twins Hal and Bill Shelburn are looking through their late dad’s closet (Dad was that very pilot). They live with their single mom (Tatiana Maslany), who does her best to parent them. Hal is the sensitive, spectacle-wearing child; Bill is the nasty one who ate most of the placenta at birth. (Both are played by Christian Convery.)

One night, soon after discovering the monkey in a box, the kids boys go with their nice babysitter to one of those hibachi restaurants where they chop and cook at the table. The monkey’s in the car. Soon, the babysitter loses her head, and we don’t mean metaphorically.Things continue in that vein. Hal, bullied mercilessly by Bill and at school, tells the monkey, who keeps appearing in places like his bedroom or backpack, that he wishes Bill would die. But when the dreaded drums start playing again, it’s Mom who’s the victim.

The two boys are sent to live with their aunt and uncle. Even moving to a small town in Maine does not rid them of the monkey. They try to dump the thing down a well.And then 25 years pass.