Can any film survive the Jane Austen police?

OR NEARLY 200 YEARS, JANE AUSTEN BELONGED TO anybody who had the good fortune to find their way to her books. these shrewdly observed novels about manners and mores among the well-heeled English of the early 19th century—and about the position of women, specifically, in that world—are among the most pleasurable reading experiences any writer has ever given us. But around 1995—the year of the explosively popular TV miniseries of Ang Lee’s elegant movie version of and of Amy Heckerling’s delightful riff on —Austen’s popularity, always steady and true, skyrocketed. Her superpopularity had a downside: it bred a population of Austen purists who seem to think they understand her motives better than even she herself did.