I knew almost nothing about this film, except that it was about a reluctant writer who ends up at a Jane Austin residency and hilarity ensues. I invited Deb to come with me to enjoy this one, not knowing that it was about a French writer and Deb had just come back after spending a week in France studying painting with a favorite teacher of hers. Thus, unknowingly, this was a perfect film to share with her. It was a very touching mix of the French language and culture, which Deb loves and this author’s crippling imposter’s syndrome, a subject I feel like I know something about… On top of all of this, the protagonist feels like her life, especially her love life, has completely passed her by and it’s too late to even try. Yeah. No comment. 

The non-writers should be able to identify with the desire to find the “right one” to make ones life make sense and the writers will recognize that we are a messed up lot who over-think everything and may well suffer from being unable to distinguish memory from fantasy and that we have the annoying need to write every last bloody thing down (side note: I’ve been working through journals that I wrote in the 1980s and not counting hundreds of essays and papers written for my degrees in Journalism and Biblical Studies or anything written long-hand, I wrote over 300,000 words from from 1985 to 1989. Yikes). Basically, I loved this movie. 

Oh, I also learned recently that the difference between romance fiction and erotica is that romance requires a happy ending. I won’t tell you what category this film fits in. Enjoy. JBB   

[Movie viewed at The Beverly Theater on 2025-08-08].

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Tags: 2025 movies, imposter syndrome, Jane Austin, media review, Video Sundays

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