Latest news with #LauraPiani
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New Movies on Streaming: ‘Thunderbolts,' ‘Ballerina' + More
This weekend, there's a real plethora of great new movies on demand. Some of this year's biggest blockbusters, including Thunderbolts and Ballerina, are now on VOD, along with other huge titles like Another Simple Favor, Tornado, and Ice Road: Vengeance. But amid all the high-octane action and big names attached to this week's new releases, we're also excited for the arrival of the new French romance Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, a French romantic comedy written and directed by Laura Piani, stars Camille Rutherford as Agathe Robinson, a French bookseller who writes a romance novel and finds herself at a writers residency where she becomes entangled in a love triangle. Sounds like the perfect antidote to superheroes and shoot-'em-ups if you ask me. These are just a few of the films that are available to watch on Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, YouTube, and through your cable service this week. Check out what movies are available to buy or rent on demand now. Marvel's Thunderbolts, which arrived on demand this week, marks the final film in Phase Five of the MCU. (Ironheart, the new series that just dropped on Disney+, is the last show in Phase Five.) In Thunderbolts, Florence Pugh stars as Yelena Belova, the adopted sister of Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow character. Yelena, a black widow assassin herself, is now leading a team of antiheroes, including Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Red Guardian (David Harbour) as they find themselves on a dangerous expedition that will redeem their reputations. WHERE TO WATCH THUNDERBOLTS Ballerina, which is set in the John Wick universe and does indeed feature Keanu Reeves as our previously dead assassin, stars Ana de Armas as Eve, an assassin herself. After the death of her own father when she was a child, Eve was taken in by Winston, the character portrayed in every Wick movie by Ian McShane, who eventually trains her to be a trained killer (who also happens to be an actual ballerina). The film is out now on demand. WHERE TO WATCH BALLERINA Another Simple Favor Mountainhead Thunderbolts* Jane Austen Wrecked My Life Ballerina The Instigators Tornado Luther: Never Too Much Pretty Thing TAEYONG: TY TRACK IN CINEMAS Nine-Ring Golden Dagger Ice Road: Vengeance The Death of Snow White Eternal Zenithal Guitar Lessons Jackdaw Sound of the Surf Sister Midnight Bring Her Back Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted Bearing Witness: Native American Voices in Hollywood The Greatest Thing Ever! A Garden Cartoon Movie Made in Dublin Pastor's Kid A Jar Full of Christmas Hard Justice The Twin Doc Holly's Christmas To Live and Die and Live A Star Without A Star: The Untold Juanita Moore Story What you see above is just a portion of the new movies and shows you can watch this month if you've got more than one streaming service subscription. We update our guides to the new releases on the most popular streaming platforms every month, so you can stay on top of the freshest titles to watch. Here are full lists, schedules, and reviews for everything streaming: New on Netflix this month New on Amazon Prime this month New on Hulu this month New on Disney+ this month New on Max this month New on Paramount+ this month New on Peacock this month New on Starz this month New on Acorn TV this month New on BritBox this month New on Tubi this month Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
ABC News
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a sweet, if predictable, rom-com worth your time
Thirty-something-year-old Parisian bookseller Agathe Robinson (Camille Rutherford, Anatomy of a Fall) is an old soul; a hopeless romantic who isn't interested in "uber sex" but the romantic courtship of a bygone era. The star of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, (written and directed by Laura Piani), Agathe is an Anglophone who buries herself in classics — Jane Austen chief among them. She also lives, with her sister and nephew, in an emotionally suspended state. An unspecified trauma lies at the heart of Agathe's existence that explains how she came to be this way and, gradually, we find out what the incident is that splintered her life in two. What: A quaint but emotionally slight rom-com with an old-world feel, written and directed by Laura Piani. Starring: Camille Rutherford, Charlie Anson, Pablo Pauly Where: In cinemas now Likely to make you feel: Charmed Agathe is a daydreamer with a penchant for writing love stories in her spare time. The comfortable monotony of her life is up-ended when her womanising co-worker and best friend, Felix (Pablo Pauly) — with whom she shares a platonic if overfamiliar kinship — applies on her behalf to the prestigious Jane Austen Writing Residency in southern England. She's successful, and it changes the course of her life. Agathe suddenly finds herself not only with the luxury of time and a room of her own to write, but she becomes the recipient of two men's affections: Felix, who she spontaneously kisses as she leaves France, and the thorny Oliver (Charlie Anson), the great-great-great-great nephew of Jane Austen herself, who manages the residency. Hijinks ensue in the bucolic greenery of a small England coastal town as the characters oscillate seamlessly between French and English. There are language mishaps, accidental nudity in the vein of The Proposal, and a ball right out of an Austen novel. Agathe is ensconced in an English manor (though the the film was shot entirely in France) straight out of the novels she devours, and is being romanced in the way she so greatly desires — through pithy one-liners, disarming honesty and genteel manners. But there's a snag. Felix surprises Agathe by showing up unannounced right before the ball, and Agathe has a decision to make. There's a little bit of Notting Hill in Agathe's vocation of bookselling (shared with Hugh Grant's William Thacker), though Paris's famed Shakespeare and Company is a more earnestly romantic backdrop than a bookstore that exclusively sells travel books. There's also a bit of Bridget Jones in the tragicomedy of Agathe's love life, and a sprinkling of Emily Henry's Book Lovers in the enemy-to-lovers scenario that plays out in a literary world. The film employs numerous different rom-com tropes but, to its credit, we are constantly kept guessing as to who, if anyone, Agathe will end up with. Much like the character she plays, who has English and French parentage, Rutherford imbues Agathe with an endearing charm as she skulks around the pastoral landscape — incapable of writing as freely as her colleagues do, experiencing nature as a menace rather than a salve. Agathe morphs into the main character of her story, but she's far from an effortlessly cool one. Emotionally dysregulated, awkward, clumsy and abrupt, Agathe has a halting yet elegant way of expressing her thoughts — prone to observing rather than experiencing. She feels like an amalgam of messy rom-com leads of yesteryear — Meg Ryan, Renee Zellweger, Drew Barrymore. Reminiscent of Mr Darcy, Anson is Hugh Grant-lite in his depiction of the prickly and reserved Oliver, while Pauly is roguish as the caddish yet well-meaning Felix. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is at its strongest when it leans into the idiosyncrasies of its colourful cast of characters. Less successful are the overblown metaphors about writing and the confected arguments about the value of literature, though they may well be a mirror to what takes place in residencies. Most accurate would be its portrayal of writing, or perhaps how little writing happens. Agathe's journey of discovery hinges on her creative reclamation of self as much as her ability to dive headfirst into love. When both predictably happen, the pay-off is sweet, yet strangely bathetic.
Irish Times
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life director Laura Piani: ‘I didn't want to do a film about a woman who is saved by a man'
Shakespeare and Company , the Paris bookshop, is celebrated for its literary heritage and cultural influence. Even its location is cool. Founded in 1951 by the late George Whitman, the store sits on the Left Bank of the Seine, opposite Notre Dame Cathedral, a refuge and meeting point for generations of writers, poets and thinkers. It's not just a bookseller but a thriving literary space, offering free lodging to aspiring writers – known as Tumbleweeds – in exchange for help around the store. One such weed is Laura Piani, the French writer-director of the new film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, who has chronicled Whitman's handover to his daughter, Sylvia. From the get-go it was an adventure. 'It all started in a bathroom of a bar in Rome, where I was studying cinema and literature,' Piani says. 'I met a depressed Canadian guy, an artist who became one of my closest friends, and who was staying in Shakespeare and Company for many months, between his travels. READ MORE 'When I came back from Rome I went there. I met Sylvia and George Whitman. I became friends with her. She was my age. And, like anybody who ever met George, I was completely infatuated with him, because he was so clever.' Piani worked at Shakespeare and Company while studying screenwriting at the European Conservatory of Audiovisual Writing . She was in the inaugural cohort of the showrunner course at La Fémis , France's premiere film school, and has subsequently written for both television and cinema, including the crime show Spiral and the pre-Tár woman-conductor drama Philharmonia. Her writing continues to engage with literature and with those old bohemian friends. 'Many years after that first meeting, when I was doing my PhD, I came back to work in the bookshop,' she says. 'I was doing the night shift. It was a very interesting crowd. The people who worked there were all aspiring writers, actors and musicians. I was trying to become a scriptwriter. We were talking about poetry and literature. We were all dreamers.' At Shakespeare and Company (whose name Whitman took from the bookshop opened nearby, in 1919, by Sylvia Beach, first publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses) Piani learned how, after asking one or two questions, to identify the book that might just change a customer's life. It's a skill she uses to craft her fictional characters and find their back stories. The bookstore and its artistic community feature prominently in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, the title of which acknowledges one of Piani's great passions. 'I discovered Jane when I was a teenager,' she says. 'She's not something that you learn at school in France. She's famous, but not as famous as in the anglophone countries. But I was a very, very active reader, and I wanted to read love stories. I remember looking for kisses and sex scenes. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life: Camille Rutherford as Agathe in Laura Piani's film 'When I was in my 20s, at Shakespeare and Company, I was confident enough to reread Jane Austen in English, and read the ones that I didn't read when I was a teenager. That's when I got the humour, the tenderness and the political questions that she was raising. Because women had to get married to survive, but it was in their hands. Suddenly, they were allowed to choose.' Piani's film puts a clever spin on the Austen-influenced romcom. It's a much-needed revival for a genre that, despite having yielded It Happened One Night, His Girl Friday and When Harry Met Sally, has been largely discarded by Hollywood and disparaged by others. 'I think that says a lot about them,' the film-maker says. 'I don't know how things are in Ireland, but in France right now, even more than love stories, we need stories of consolation. 'I do feel there is a common and shared joy in the romcom. A big reason for me to make the film was for friends who are stuck watching the same romcoms from the 1990s. You don't need to be sophisticated when you start to do something as long as it comes from a very sincere and organic place. I wanted to give something to the people I love.' Leaving aside the 17 adaptations (and counting) of Pride and Prejudice since 1938, there is a strong argument for positioning Austen as the godmother of the modern romcom. Bridget Jones's Diary, from 2001, leant into Colin Firth's post-Austen celebrity; Clueless seamlessly relocated Emma to 1990s Beverly Hills; Fire Island, from 2022, repopulates Pride and Prejudice with gay men; and Austenland, from 2013, adapts a classic romantic misunderstanding to a Regency theme-park setting. Austen is, as Piani notes, a universally acknowledged cultural force. 'I've found Jane Austen societies everywhere, in every single country from Greece to Spain to Italy,' the writer-director says. 'It gives me a big hope for humanity, because these people come together and talk about literature and poetry everywhere. She belongs to everyone. She's timeless. And the world needs romance that is not marketed product for streaming platforms.' Jane Austen Wrecked My Life: Pablo Pauly as Félix and Camille Rutherford as Agathe in Laura Piani's film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life follows Agathe (Camille Rutherford), a clumsy yet endearing Parisian bookseller at Shakespeare and Company. Despite her passion for literature and her dreams of becoming a writer, Agathe is blocked, both creatively and romantically. Her best friend, Félix (Pablo Pauly), secretly submits her work to the Jane Austen Writers' Residency in England, leading to her unexpected acceptance. At the retreat Agathe encounters the preoccupied Oliver (Charlie Anson), a brooding Austen descendant, igniting a complex romantic triangle between him – a great-great-great-nephew of the writer – and her chum Félix. Who will Agathe blame for this predicament and all its complications? 'When you try to approach a romcom after the masterpieces that were made already, you need to think about what you can bring on the table – something a little bit new without being pretentious,' Piani says. 'A love triangle has worked since the beginning of dramatology. I wanted to have dance as a turning point and all these things that consciously we wait for. But I did not want to do a film about a woman who is saved by a man. I believe in love, but not that. I wanted her to have this goal of becoming a writer. I allowed myself to play with the cultural differences between France and England without being too obvious.' The rival suitors are notably not as unsuitable as many of Austen's failed gentlemen callers. Félix is a flirt, but he's not a cad like George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. Neither character is as pretentious as the Emma reject Mr Elton or as overbearing as the other Emma reject, Mr Knightley. 'I didn't want men who were seducers,' Piani says. 'I wanted the audience to love both suitors. Félix sincerely loves women. I took my cues from Austen. Because Mr Darcy is the opposite of an alpha or toxic male. I tried to be meta as much as I could. The fact that Jane Austen was sharing her bed with her sister when she died moved me a lot. So I brought a sister into the story.' Austen fans will (gleefully) welcome the parallels between Rutherford's lovelorn Agathe and Anne Elliot, the protagonist of Persuasion. Just as the stoic Anne aches for Captain Wentworth, whom she once rejected, Agathe, too, is in a self-imposed limbo. Unsurprisingly, Anne is also the Austen character whom Piani feels closest to. 'The one that moved me the most was Persuasion,' she says. 'I think it's because it's darker. She's older and she thinks that life is over for her. She's, what, 27? And she feels like she missed the train. I cannot even remember how many times I heard that in the mouth of a woman. The feeling of limitation and of being overdue, Jane Austen was writing about this very modern idea 300 years ago.' Jane Austen Wrecked My Life was snapped up by Sony Pictures Classics at Toronto International Film Festival last year, and has opened in the United States to rave reviews. 'When I made the film I thought, Okay, maybe the audience for our film will be women,' Piani says. 'But not at all. There are young men and older men. Everyone. I've been hugged by so many people saying the same thing: 'Thank you for making me smile and cry.' That's the most special part of this for me.' Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is in cinemas from Friday, June 13th
Irish Times
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review: Sparky dialogue and hearty comedy carry this lovely, mischievous film
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life Director : Laura Piani Cert : 15A Starring : Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson, Annabelle Lengronne, Liz Crowther, Alan Fairbairn, Frederick Wiseman Running Time : 1 hr 37 mins There is a moment of classic romcom disharmony about a third of the way through this charming bilingual entertainment. Agathe Robinson, an aspiring writer who works in Paris's famous Shakespeare and Company bookshop, has arrived in a leafy corner of England for a Jane Austen retreat. Oliver, a descendant of the Regency writer, reveals, minutes after picking Agathe up, that he has little time for his ancestor. Agathe scowls at this disrespect. The two settle into mutual hatred. We know roughly how this will play out. Stories have been playing out that way since Rosalind Russell frowned towards Cary Grant. The same dynamics were at work when Meg Ryan later snapped at Billy Crystal. Laura Piani, making her feature debut, is, of course, also gesturing back to the 19th century. All those classic romcom plots, antipathy melting into affection, are deeply in debt to Austen herself. It is to Piani's great credit that her film rises above comparisons not just with Austen's work and the trad romcom but also with attempts – we're thinking of you, Bridget Jones – to weave those last two things together. No postmodern doublethink is required to sustain interest in the prickly love triangle at the core of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Sparky dialogue and hearty comedy keep the story aloft throughout. The actors juggle French and English with great dexterity. [ Laura Piani: 'I didn't want to do a film about a woman who is saved by a man. I believe in love, but not that' Opens in new window ] Events begin with Agathe, played by a convincingly fretful Camille Rutherford, struggling with life, love and work in the French capital. An injection of energy comes her way when Félix (Pablo Pauly), colleague and occasional squeeze, sends her story to the Jane Austen retreat, only for the organisers to break into raves. Agathe travels. Oliver (Charlie Anson) intervenes. Soon she finds herself torn between old chum and new annoyance. READ MORE Which year did Marty not visit? 1885 1955 2015 2055 What was Clint Eastwood's first film as director? The Outlaw Josey Wales Play Misty for Me Firefox Bird Who is not a sibling? Macaulay Kieran Rory Benji The actor playing the title character of which film was actually born in the US? Klute (1971) The Mask (1994) Dudley Do-Right (1999) Green Lantern (2011) What is the last Pixar film to win the best animated feature Oscar? Soul Onward Coco Inside Out Which is the odd period out? Ms Weld Dan Aykroyd in Dragnet Ms Squibb Christina Ricci in The Addams Family Who was not portrayed by Steph? Ally Lee Patrizia Breathless Which is the odd one out? Harrison Ford's other profession 2024 Palme d'Or winner Todd Haynes's notorious early short Halloween and Escape from New York Who is about to succeed, among many, many others, James Whale, Terence Fisher and Kenneth Branagh? Guillermo del Toro Ari Aster David Lowery Robert Eggers Whose daughter fought the Triffids? Alison Steadman Thora Hird Patricia Routledge Margaret Rutherford The film does occasionally struggle with getting England right. We are always aware that this is a French film-maker looking through the window at the crumpets on their doilies. But there is a mischievous intelligence at work that complements the embrace of sometimes broad misunderstandings. The film has a coolness that you find only in French comedy. It's worth it alone to hear Agathe identify, in the most Gallic of vowels, one character with a particular work. He suggests, apparently, Mr Bertram in 'Mahnsfeeld Perk'. No offence intended. Lovely film. In cinemas from Friday, June 13th
News18
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- News18
Director Laura Piani Reveals She Draws Inspiration From Jane Austen For Comic Writing I N18G
Filmmaker and writer Laura Piani opens up about her creative process and shares how Jane Austen's timeless wit really helps her add a humorous flair to her writing. Check out the full video right here. news | entertainment news live | latest bollywood news | bollywood | news18 | n18oc_moviesLiked the video? Please press the thumbs up icon and leave a comment. Subscribe to Showsha YouTube channel and never miss a video: Showsha on Instagram: Showsha on Facebook: Showsha on X: Showsha on Snapchat: entertainment and lifestyle news and updates on:
