Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Jane Austen a gâché ma vie) comes from writer and director Laura Piani. It’s a romantic comedy, mostly in French with some English, about a bookshop worker who wins a spot at a writing retreat called the Jane Austen Residency.

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life begins in the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. Laura Piani actually worked in this bookstore at one time and that is where she got the idea for the lonely bookseller Agathe (Camille Rutherford). Agathe’s love life was mostly fantasy. She dreamed of being a writer and submitted a writing sample based on one of her fantasies to the Jane Austen Residency.

The bookstore scenes were really in Shakespeare and Company. But the Residency, supposedly in England, was actually filmed in a house in France.

Agathe worked with Felix (Pablo Pauly) and had for years. They were good friends, comfortable together. He spent time with her in the home she made with her sister and nephew.

When Felix took Agathe to the ferry for the trip to England, he kissed her. She kissed him back. A real kiss from a real person, not a fantasy. This wound Agathe up in a big way.

In England, Agathe was picked up by Oliver (Charlie Anson) to be taken to the retreat. He was the great great great great nephew of Jane Austen. His family started the Residency and he was helping run it. He said he was a literature professor but didn’t like Austen as well as Shakespeare or Dickens.

It took Agathe about 90 seconds to deliver a brilliant treatise on why Jane Austen mattered. Then the car broke down and they had to spend the night sitting on a narrow road in the woods glaring at each other.

It was pretty obvious from this rocky beginning that Oliver and Agathe were going to fall in love. It took a long time.

Agathe couldn’t write at the writers’ retreat. Felix showed up expecting an expansion on the kiss. There was a ball as part of the retreat, with couples in period costumes doing period ballroom dances. (How in the world would modern people know how to do those complicated dances?) It was Bridgerton for the contemporary Austen fans.

The charming thing about a French romantic comedy is it doesn’t have to follow the Hollywood romcom formula. This one did not. It was slow moving. There was a lot of watching writers write (or not write), walks in the woods, and writers getting drunk in the pub. There was humor, music, poetry, and ultimately a demonstration of love.

Some of the most quotable moments are mentioned in the trailer. When Agathe talked she was brilliant. She could have cured her writer’s block by talking about literature, but she didn’t think to do that.

This tender charmer is streaming on Netflix.