pale fire; In Becoming Jane, a beloved British author is revealed to be as witty and willful as any of her heroines.(Jane Austen)(Movie review)

If you wandered into Becoming Jane without knowing anything about it, you might think you'd come upon an adaptation of one of Jane Austen's lesser novels. But this romantic drama about a headstrong heroine isn't actually by Austen-it's about her. Julian Jarrold's handsome production shows how a brilliant young woman in unpromising circumstances grew into one of the greatest of novelists.

When we first encounter Jane (Anne Hathaway), she's being pushed to marry the dull nephew of the rich, redoubtable Lady Gresham (a hilariously curdled Maggie Smith). But then she meets Irishman Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy), a velvet-coated law student with a spirit as rebellious as her own. Although the two instantly clash-both are proud and prejudiced-they soon grasp that they are actually soul mates. But Lefroy, too, is penniless, depending for survival on a haughty uncle (Ian Richardson). Very freely based on Austen's 1795 flirtation with the real-life Lefroy, Becoming Jane suggests that this amorous episode inspired her masterpieces. While such a vision of artistic creation is a tad literal-minded, the movie remains a nifty piece of work that resounds with echoes of Austen's novels (sneaky vicars, sudden elopements) and offers several keen performances, especially Helen McCrory's eerily original portrait of Ann Radcliffe, the popular Gothic novelist, who teaches Jane that a woman's dull outer circumstances can mask an incandescent inner landscape.

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