It's a risky business plotting a story around the life of a writer whose own scribblings are now acknowledged as classic literature.

Somehow you assume that the newly-contrived yarn will be a poor pastiche inevitably shown up by the verbal dexterity of the original.

So it's a pleasure to see a script speculating about the love life of Jane Austen which actually employs a handful of bon mots that wouldn't disgrace the pen of the lady herself.

Anne Hathaway - distancing herself ever further from sugary confections such as The Princess Diaries - plays Jane as a sweetly rebellious parson's daughter with a weakness for the written word.

She's being groomed for a moneyed marriage by her scatty mum, Julie Walters impersonating Brenda Blethyn/Alison Steadman playing Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

However, fate inevitably bowls a googly when she falls for trainee lawyer Tom Lefroy (McAvoy) an impecunious bon viveur holding a humorous disdain for these unsophisticated countryfolk. Yes, he's D'Arcy without the dosh.

Storylines that would find themselves woven into the fabric of Sense and Sensibility et al include the romances - doomed and otherwise - of Jane's sister and brothers.

There's even a frightful old bat - Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith on grizzled auto-pilot) - as a wizened template for P&P's bitter Lady Catherine De Burgh.

It's a bit slow to hit its stride, but once the chemistry is set fizzing between Jane and Tom then the unsteady course of their love is genuinely affecting.

Wisely, the movie shies away from making too many conclusions about their purported relationship but there's more than enough to send Austen's legion of fans delicately sniffling into their 'kerchiefs.

Tim Evans