I love the feeling I get when I find a film I can fall in love with. You can always pick them, too, sometimes within the space of the opening credits. Sure, you can grow to love a movie, but there are those ones that reel you in from the very start. Nothing in the world can interrupt my viewing, can draw me away from the story. It’s like discovering there’s one more piece of chocolate left at the back of the fridge.

I rented The Jane Austen Book Club on Sunday and it was just the right film for me to watch that afternoon. I’d had a difficult, hormonal couple of days and wasn’t feeling too cheerful so I needed to take my mind off it all, and that’s what this film did. Regular readers of this blog will know I’m a Jane Austen fan, and that my love for her writing has grown considerably in the last few months, so it wont come as much of a surprise, I’m sure, that I have fallen for another Jane-related story.

The film itself is about the lives of these five people, who form a bookclub to read all six of Austen’s novels and each person picks a book, then they host the bookclub discussion for that book. As the film unfolds you begin to see how each character’s own life resembles that of their chosen Jane book. It’s not cheesy, and it’s done in a really great way, where you realise just how real all their problems are and how we all go through similar things. Plus, the ending is nice, too (and I do love a good ending!).

I am reminded how the simplest things can help us to feel better when life is rough. Be it a good movie, a delicious meal, coffee with a friend, making something — whatever — it all counts and it all helps.