Becoming Jane, Becoming angry

Oh, my poor eyebrows. They've been raised so many times tonight at some rather disconcerting details about the upcoming Austen biopic Becoming Jane.

First, this imdb review in which the reviewer notes that the script and Hathaway fail to convey the intelligence that Austen must have possessed. One detail warranted my posting this at all:

she [Hathaway] looks quite resplendent, dashing across the hills in a billowing red dress to watch the lads skinny-dipping

Excuse me?

And then there's this excerpt from an article in the Telegraph:

When, in the film, Jane and Tom decide to elope to London, it is impossible not to think of Lydia Bennet making a dash for it with her charming, ever-so-slightly-caddish Wickham.

Elope to London? That is so inaccurate that to call it a lie would be understatement. Most Austen biographers (except for the one who was a consultant on the biopic) do not think Austen's relationship with Tom Lefroy developed beyond a clear attraction, much less to elopement plans.

For a long time, word was that the movie was based on Claire Tomalin's measured biography of Austen, but now it has emerged that it was John Spence's more problematic interpretation of Austen's life that was the source material (oh my god! there's a movie tie-in!!). I studied Spence's biography in a grad course and found it highly speculative in parts, especially the section regarding Lefroy. I'll post about the Spence bio some other time (what joy to look forward to!), but knowing how adaptation and movie-making can play with facts, I suspect that the movie will exaggerate or extend Spence's already tenuous claims even further.

The movie opens March 9 in the UK. Perhaps I'll be able to catch it when I'm there in April. Poor North Americans must wait until August. And on a slightly different note, the UK website has the trailer, which a) sounds odd with a British-accented Voice of God and b) uses the score from Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility. What?