One can appreciate Julian Jarrold’s romance, Becoming Jane, without knowing anything about the writings of Jane Austen or the speculation about her hidden life. Among the great novelists for her vision, precision, craft and tone, with side trips to Bath and London she painted on the miniaturist canvas of her native rural Hampshire, ignored momentous contemporary wars and politics, and self-admittedly explored twinned themes of love and money, only half-ironically wondering what else there was.

That, of two girls among eight children, neither the authoress nor beloved older sister Cassandra ever came close to marriage after the death of the latter’s pastor fiancé, has led to intense guesswork. As with the literary remains of Amherst recluse Emily Dickinson, the works have been backread to find, produce, or invent some passionate real-life encounter or other that explains her knowledge of the heart in spite of a short, outwardly uneventful life.

In keeping with the arch playfulness of Austen herself, and sneaking in literary references that are fun if caught but not fatal if missed, Sarah Williams and Kevin Hood’s script seizes upon two short references among the sisters’ letters -- from which Cassandra mysteriously destroyed three years’ worth -- to imagine a what-if romance that might have been the missing link of experience that informed the six novels and other pieces.

Pure balderdash bluff or food for thought, the result has the charm of the best of a number of screen adaptations of the novels in today’s “Jane Austen moment”-- even to a Bollywoodized Bride & Prejudice -- and way surpasses the confused 1980 fiction that was Jane Austen in Manhattan. Filmed in daylight effect or sometimes only centerlit torch or candelabra interiors, it appears generally period-faithful, shot in Dublin and Counties Meath, Wicklow and Offaly. As much as anything, it showcases a fine performance from New Yorker Anne Hathaway, a good if purposefully one-note surrounding cast, and the thankless, effective laid-back interpretation of Laurence Fox as stiff Mr. Wisley, who like also rejected suitor Jay Gatsby turned out all right at the end -- and, were the story not held accountable to some facts, might also have turned out an appropriate mate.

Wisley reverses field to show his mettle, whereas at twenty Jane is made of such admirable staunch stuff from the start that her brief time of hopeful passion seems a girlish fall from dignity. Determined to make her own way, by the pen if possible, she is not a woman’s libber but, rather, just herself in an England where young country women had barely an option other than marriage, preferably to money. Even coming from middle class trade wealth and being a successful Gothic novelist in London, Ann Radcliffe (Helen McCrory) is rueful about social expectations regarding marriage, motherhood and career.

Not so poor in fact as in film, Jane’s screen parents reflect many of her fictions, the clergyman father (James Cromwell) quietly patient while mother (Julie Walters) pushes her daughters toward prosperous bachelors. Cassandra (Anna Maxwell Martin) safely engaged and son Henry (Joe Anderson) nearly all set in the military (and in the eyes of wealthy, somewhat older exile Eliza de Feuillide, played by Lucy Cohu), Mrs. Austen throws Jane in the way of Wisley, nephew and heir of snooty childless Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith).

Banished for a spell from London, where law studies have been overshadowed by carousing with friend Henry, poor but spirited Tom Lefroy (Scotsman James McAvoy) arrives sulking in the Hampshire sticks. His family in Limerick dependent on him, and he dependent on his stern uncle, Judge Langlois (Ian Richardson), Tom is brave, cynical, frank, arrogant, habitually late, and a reader of novels. Sparks fly when independent souls Jane and he chafe one another in these socially and geographically restricted quarters. As in the novels the heroine will come to write, first impressions are to prove unjust or adjustable.

Love blossoms into the passion that scholars and biographers have searched for in Austen’s real life. But Tom is penniless, with others depending on him, and, though a woman, Jane is not much better off and has her mother and society’s expectations to contend with. Historically unprovable, in any event, the screen resolution takes the Hollywood noble renunciation path. Still and all, Hathaway’s authoress is nowhere more radiant than in her final seconds, when the story closes with another story within it. 

(Released by Miramax Films and rated "PG" for brief nudity and mild language.)