Ellen Page, get ready to enter the horror show that is early Victorian fashion.
Variety is reporting that Ellen Page is set to star in a BBC Films adaptation of the Charlotte Bronte novel Jane Eyre. Alison Owen is producing for Ruby Films. Moira Buffini wrote the screenplay. No director is set yet.
Jane Eyre is a much easier to handle novel than sister Emily’s thorny Wuthering Heights (which is again about to go into production, this time with Natalie Portman). It’s one of the standard-bearers for gothic romance, with its story of Jane Eyre a poor but tough-minded workhouse survivor who goes to work as a governess of the daughter of the seemingly haughty, cold, but (of course) tall, dark and handsome Mr. Rochester. Improbably (in the real world, but not in romance land) they fall in love, but there is one wee problem, namely that the first Mrs. Rochester is still around. In fact, she is living in the attic of the Rochester manse and quite mad. Not angry mad, but crazy mad. Oops.
See? This is usually too easy for filmmakers and audiences to resist, and they rarely have; Variety notes that there have been at least 20 TV or film versions made. The BBC just did a TV adaptation last year. The last big screen version appeared in 1996; Charlotte Gainsborough starred and Franco Zeffirelli directed. The most famous one, though, is the 1944 version, starring Joan Fontaine as Jane and Orson Welles as Rochester (super kid stars Margaret O’Brien, Peggy Ann Garner and a ridiculously beautiful Elizabeth Taylor also have small roles). It’s an agreeably goth black and white, it’s a posh MGM production, it’s very (melo)dramatic, it does the job quite well.
Page is probably closer in age to Jane as Bronte envisioned her than many actresses who have played the part. But that makes casting Rochester tricky. You need someone who’s got the Byron-esque gothic handsomeness for the part, plus the lived-in, world-weariness the role calls for, but it also has to be someone who won’t look like a child molester next to Page. See what I mean? Rochester needs to have some kind of dramatic heft to him, but Page is…young and spunky…and young…and, well, looks like she should be going out with boys, not men. If you know what I mean. So chemistry is really important here, to avoid a kind of “yuck” factor amongst the 14 year old girls who may be interested in this movie.
