After bringing all of Jane Austen's novels to the screen, some of them more than once, Hollywood has given us a movie about the author of Pride and Prejudice.

Becoming Jane (2007), written by Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams, directed by Julian Jarrold, and starring Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen, is not a biography like Walk the Line (2005). It's fiction, like Shakespeare in Love (1998).

And it's fiction in the style of a Jane Austen novel.

Oh, there are a few facts that correspond to the real-life Jane Austen (1775-1817). Her father was a clergyman. She had a sister she was close to and neither woman ever married. In addition to Henry, played by Joe Anderson in the film, they had four other brothers, one of whom spent his long life shut away with some kind of developmental affliction.

Tom LeFroy, portrayed by James McAvoy, really existed. Jane met him during the winter of 1795-96 and made a couple of playful references to him in two letters she wrote to her sister Cassandra. Six years after her brief acquaintance with LeFroy, Jane received a proposal of marriage from a wealthy neighbor. She accepted, only to back out on the following day. Laurence Fox plays the rejected suitor in the film.

For the most part, however, Becoming Jane is the stuff of the imagination, a love letter to the author whose novels have been the source of so much pleasure for so many people over the past 200 years.

The plot of the film, like that of Austen's best known novel Pride and Prejudice, is the story of young women in pursuit of husbands in a society that ranks social obligations and propriety far above personal happiness. Viewers who have never read an Austen book will find plenty to enjoy in the romance, the superb acting, and the lush production values. This film is definitely Academy Award material.

Julie Waters, as Jane's happily married but overworked mother struggling to maintain a middle class household on her clergyman husband's inadequate salary, should be in the running for Best Supporting Female Actor.

Eigil Bryld deserves attention for the exquisite cinematography that captures the rich greens and browns of the Irish countryside. Becoming Jane was filmed in Ireland in order to reproduce the unspoiled Hampshire of Austen's day. The Austen family's walk home from church along the river is especially evocative of a lovely, vanished time. Bryld focuses on architectural details, including parts of the Austen house in need of painting, subtly reinforcing our impression of a family living in elegant surroundings on straitened finances.

I'll also be watching for a nomination in the category of costume design, if only for a chance to find out how to pronounce the name of designer Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh. The Regency dresses add an element of charm and elegance that is lacking in my all-time favorite version of Pride and Prejudice with Greer Garson. For some reason the Bennett sisters and their lady friends in the 1940 film are clothed in Victorian frills and flounces.

Some critics object to Becoming Jane for its lack of biographical accuracy. Others are offended by the suggestion that Jane Austen required human models and personal experience in order to create characters like Mr. Darcy and Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Feminists may be annoyed at seeing one more effort to rectify the historical fact of Jane Austen's spinsterhood. Heaven forbid that she may have chosen not to marry because she preferred the single state!

Such criticisms are irrelevant to the beauty and cleverness of Becoming Jane. An enjoyable film in its own right, it holds special charm for those who are familiar with the characters and plot of Pride and Prejudice.