Jane Austen rises on the Hollywood A-list

If Jane Austen were alive today, she certainly would have understood the appeal of reality TV shows such as "The Bachelor" and "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" After all, her novels are full of scenes in which young women compete for the attention of eligible men with desirable incomes.

But in Austen's books, the rival of the heroine is the one who fawns over the leading man. And where TV couples profess to forge a "connection" on a first date (a curious property of hot tubs is that they can induce two people to believe they have a unique chemistry), Austen's characters spend eons trying to burrow beneath the appearances of a romantic prospect to discern whether he is sincere or simply a cad.

In short, the author understood that the cardinal element of a great romance is the frisson that comes from the thrill of the chase. That pursuit, in Austen's hands, becomes a marathon filled with hurdles.

Perhaps bored with the predictable cycle of conquest and consummation on "Sex and the City," popular culture is rediscovering Jane Austen and her subtle love stories. From "Regency House," a PBS reality series that challenges men and women to dress up in Georgian costume and court each other in the traditional manner described in Austen's novels, to several new movie versions of "Pride and Prejudice," audiences are intrigued by an era in which romance boiled slowly and passions bubbled under the surface.

"[Sex] is not quite so interesting anymore because it's so common and easily available," says Linda Troost, coeditor of "Jane Austen in Hollywood." "That repressed passion and control is a much rarer thing, and therefore more special."

That chaste quality is retained in a witty version of "Pride and Prejudice" out on DVD this week. It's not completely faithful to the novel - it is, after all, set in latter-day Salt Lake City - but then neither is "Bride and Prejudice," another contemporary adaptation coming to cinemas in February. This time the setting is India and the movie, directed by Gurinder Chadha ("Bend It Like Beckham"), adopts the conventions of "Bollywood" musicals even as it gleefully swaps bonnets and breeches for sarongs and saris.

Austen fans of a traditional disposition can look forward to a 19th-century version of "Pride and Prejudice," starring Keira Knightley and Judi Dench, due later next year.

"One thing I love about Austen's work is that you can sit looking at one of those film adaptations with the book in your hands and nothing has changed," says Helen Blythe, a professor of English literature at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas. "It's 200 years [later] but the conversation, the dialogue can be taken straight from the book and placed into an early 21st-century film and you don't have to change anything."

For Hollywood, the attraction of the stories lies in their appeal to the date-movie crowd. But Austen fans say what differentiates the author from similarly plotted Harlequin novels are her witty, often satirical, comments about human nature. "They are universal," says Sue Hughes, editor of Jane Austen's Regency World, a bimonthly magazine. "It's the way people behave and work in connection with each other. The way she's observed them so cleverly is really what matters."

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