SPIRIT OF LOVE SOARS SURGE IN JANE AUSTEN PROJECTS KEEPS ROMANTICISM ALIVE AND WELL.

Byline: GLENN WHIPP 

>FILM WRITER

Anne Hathaway looks at the one-sheet for her new movie, "Becoming Jane," and winces.

" 'Their love story was her greatest inspiration,' " she says, reading the poster's promotional tag line. "I wouldn't have gone with that."

Hathaway laughs.

"I understand why certain fans get upset," says Hathaway, who plays Austen in the movie. "I think the movie gives a fairer evaluation of her whole life, not just the inspiration. But I guess you want people to realize that after they've paid to see the movie. And people love love."

Hathaway may be overestimating the reaction of Austen devotees (Janeites seems to be the preferred nomenclature) to the flights of romantic fancy contained within "Becoming Jane."

The movie, which opened Friday, takes place when Austen is 20 and spins her brief relationship with Irish lawyer Tom Lefroy (played by James McAvoy) into a grand, tempestuous romance that ends up fueling Austen's six subsequent novels.

All the classic Austen themes are here -- the economics of love, women's inability to work, the importance of marrying well, spinsterhood being viewed as tragic. And it's all filtered through an Austen who is young, vibrant and very, very sexy.

"The clarion call was, 'Not too many bonnet shots," says "Becoming Jane" director Julian Jarrold.

And that's fine with Austen scholars. The movie also has the blessing of the various Austen societies.

"I looked at it the way I looked at 'Shake-

speare in Love,'" says Joan Ray, a professor of English at the University of Colorado, past president of the Jane Austen Society of America and author of "Jane Austen for Dummies."

"It's not a true story about Jane Austen, just as that wasn't a true story about Shakespeare," Ray says. "But it's absolutely charming.

"For Jane Austen readers, seeing this is like playing movie detective, finding which lines and characters they've cherry-picked from novels.

"It very much captures the spirit of the work and the woman."

It's also the first of several Austen-related projects to ponder the heart of the writer and the heroines of her novels. The projects all appear well-intentioned and uniformly smart, even as some occasionally skirt the borders of chick-lit territory in their depictions of the age-old conflict of the heart vs. the head.

In the upcoming "The Jane Austen Book Club," a group of young Californians meet to discuss their favorite author, only to find their relationships beginning to resemble those of Austen's characters.

"The Complete Jane Austen," coming to PBS' "Masterpiece Theatre" in January, will air adaptations of Austen's novels -- four of the movies are new, the other two will be repeats of Colin Firth's beloved "Pride and Prejudice" and Kate Beckinsale's "Emma" -- as well as a show about Austen's own romantic life titled "Miss Austen Regrets."

Says Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of the "Masterpiece Theatre" series, on the current wave of Austen projects: "Somebody said, 'What she wrote and when she wrote it was like "Sex and the City" in the 18th century.' Rather than 'Sex and the City,' it's a little bit like hand-holding in the country. But it's the same idea."

The 1995 "Masterpiece Theatre" production of "Pride and Prejudice," starring Firth as Mark Darcy, arguably remains the benchmark against which all Austen adaptations are judged. Firth parlayed the popularity into a role in "Bridget Jones's Diary," playing Darcy as a modern-day romantic dreamboat.

"'Pride and Prejudice,' in its restrained ways, is one of the sexiest books in the language," says Andrew Davies, who wrote the "Masterpiece Theatre" adaptation of the novel. "The sex is the engine of the plot."

Austen fan sites have been buzzing over how far "Becoming Jane" takes the author's physical relationship with Lefroy. (Don't look for spoilers here.) In the film, Lefroy comes off as a cross between Darcy and that other "Pride and Prejudice" hunk, Wickham. In reality, Lefroy was apparently a pious, serious young man, and the intensity of his brief relationship with Austen remains a subject of serious debate.

"It could be much more than it was in the movie, and it could be much less," Hathaway says. "No one can tell us exactly what happened. That's the beauty of it. So I never felt bad. There is evidence to support a deep love between them."

Counters Eaton: "That was one small relationship, when she was 17, actually. When Jane was 17, there was this guy who came for the summer. They may or may not have been as close as the movie says. And then off he went, as they characterize it, the love of her life.

"But in her diary," Eaton continues, "she is specific about proposals she had from other people, two specifically and the third probably."

The differing opinions continue to add to the aura of mystery surrounding Austen's life. The one thing everyone can agree on is that her popularity shows no signs of diminishing.

"She entertains, but she also really fires up your brain," Hathaway says. "When people call her the mother of all chick-lit, I just want to scream. Chick-lit is Twinkies. Jane Austen is sirloin."

"I know after a movie like this, enrollment in my class is going to go up," Ray says. "More people will read Jane Austen. What's not to like about that?"

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

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James McAvoy and Anne Hathaway star in "Becoming Jane."