**WARNING SPOILER ALERT**

I’m not much of a film critic. But there was something about this film that has brought that critic out. It was a Saturday morning and I was looking for some ‘easy-tv’ on Netflix. A couple along in ‘popular’, I picked Austenland. I will accept that it was probably aimed to be an easy watch and that it doesn’t need to be studied in any great detail. However, it did make me consider an important mental health point that I would like to share.

The film starts with a girl, Jane, who grows up loving all things Jane Austen – with little interest in anything else. When she is an adult, she is given the opportunity to have the ultimate Jane Austen experience – living in a grand house with the chance of having an Austen-like romance. She thinks this is her dream come true and spends all her life savings on this. When she gets there, the dream was not like she had imagined at all and she had thought she had been deluded. She goes back to her old life, thinking she was going to have to change her whole focus in life. But in classic rom-com style, the man chases her down and she gets the romance she had dreamed of. The end- bravo!

In real life of course, some people’s lives can work out like that – they have a specific plan of what they want to achieve and they get it exactly as and when planned. However, where I feel this film missed a trick was not exploring the idea that we can set ourselves up with big plans to achieve at set times only to be disappointed if we ‘fail.’ I feel sorry for people who think their life has less of a purpose after a setback in a life goal.

How I wished the film had ended was if they had taken a break from the stereotypical rom-com ending. Instead, it would be Jane learning how to come back from this set-back and being content even though things hadn’t gone the way she had hoped and found ‘success’ and ‘happiness’ in other ways. Maybe I am reading too much into this film and I’m turning it into something not enjoyable to watch. However, it did get me thinking about the societal view on this. A lot on the fact that we can be encouraged more to set specific goals for the future rather than remembering the fact that there can be a lot of unexpected changes in life, meaning that we can re-evaluate big or small things on a daily basis.

I hope this post has encouraged you to think about your view on this – and has maybe given you a film night suggestion! As always, feel free to get in touch with any questions/feedback/comments, I always love to hear them. Stay tuned for the next instalment.

Until next time

K