A Perfect Summer Movie
It is the middle of July and I was desperate for some relief from the heat and the weight of upsetting news that takes a physical toll on the body and soul these days. I’m up at 5:30 most mornings while there is still some coolness left from the nighttime hours. My routine is simple. I fix a café latte and allow myself the occasional homemade banana muffin or ginger cookie to go with my coffee. For precisely 90 minutes, my year-old cat Peekay—wired like a precision time piece—patiently sits next to me on the couch and allows me time to exchange thoughts with friends online and peruse news feeds and blogs.
I don’t go to a gym like our daughter Heidi does because I take walks every morning and evening with my cat. Wearing only his collar with its “I’m Chipped” ID tag and a bell, he’s off and running with me close behind the minute I open the front door. For 45 minutes, he is free to explore rock wall crannies in search of lizards, chase squirrels, and climb the lower trunks of tall fir trees at the edge of our woods. Then, while Peekay cools his jets inside a screened Catio on the deck, I’m free to spend another hour or so watering flower pots, deadheading spent blossoms, collecting dry nasturtium seed pods, and harvesting lavender wands.
For anyone who has ever hauled a 100-foot rubber garden hose around their yard, you know that the simplest watering task takes patience and muscles. Hoses by nature inevitably develop multiple kinks again and again, stopping the flow of water and frustrating the gardener to no end. And, if you’ve hoisted a five-gallon galvanized can filled to the brim with water (or two at once) and walked to pots that are scattered here and there but never near a faucet, you surely understand that gardening is a great builder of upper body and core strength. No gym membership is required. Watering is an exercise and also can be a quiet meditation that takes place outside in the fresh air right at home.
On the earlier mentioned subject of finding relief from the upsetting nature of evening news reportage, my dear friend Larry and his wife Heather often turn to Jane Austen for relief. Heather is rereading each of Austen’s classic novels, and together they watch BBC and PBS productions of her books. I recommended Persuasion, published after Austen’s death when the author was but half my age. (https://pbs.org/show/persuasion?source=social). But what I also needed to escape the heat and noise of the world was a witty, thought-provoking summer matinee.
Last week, Nevada City’s fine little independent movie house came to my rescue. Like Charlotte Brontë’s protagonist Jane Eyre, the Onyx theater is small, plain and unremarkable on the outside. But there is character and beauty to be found within. It houses two 29-seat screening areas decorated with gorgeous hand-painted murals and ceiling, plush velvety seats and generous leg room. The concession area that greets you as you enter offers organic popcorn, lovely wine selections, a rack of assorted chocolate goodies and blankets if you get too chilly.
Just when I needed relief, a text from the Onyx arrived with dates and times for two films currently showing there. One was Brad Pitts’s race car flick F1, not my cup of tea. The other was Jane Austen Wrecked My Life—a modern romantic comedy channeling Anne Elliott, the protagonist in Miss Austen’s last novel Persuasion. After watching the trailer and discovering that this 2024 French production was a blend of French and English dialogue with subtitles, I reserved seats for Heidi and me for a matinee showing that week.
Readers, I loved Jane Austen a gache ma vie (Jane Austen Wrecked My Life). Every scene was a visual treat. I loved being in Paris inside the actual storied English language bookstore Shakespeare & Company where aspiring novelist Agathe works and senses life is passing her by. I followed Agathe on her solitary walks in the woods and lush English gardens at the Jane Austen Residency where she has been invited for two weeks to work on her unfinished novel but finds she is unable to produce a single word. I was captured by the romantic triangle of Agathe, Felix, and Oliver and loved the gorgeous soundtrack arranged by Peter Von Poehl.
Because I am a total romantic, I couldn’t help but root for Agathe and her Darcy—Jane Austen’s great, great, great nephew Oliver who she initially finds utterly intolerable—to finally connect. While this lovely film is a comedy, it’s also a poignant real-life story of a woman’s struggle with writer’s block linked to a tragedy that wrecked her childhood. Agathe must ultimately find her way past that emotional roadblock in order to write her own novel and find her happy ending. For me, it was a perfect summer movie.