15, 124 mins

A few liberties are taken with Britain’s favourite lady writer in Becoming Jane. Rather than sainted Jane of Austen, the tea-sipping spinster of the popular imagination, this spirited costume drama depicts Austen as a hot-headed young woman who flirted, danced and drank, and, most importantly, fell deeply in love.

Based on the 2003 biography by Jon Spence, which argued a case for an early love affair between Austen and a young Irishman called Tom Lefroy, the film takes the bare bones of the known facts and pads them out with stolen moments in the library and playful rivalry on the cricket field. Yes, Jane Austen plays cricket. Before the overprotective Austenites ignite with fury, consider this: Jane gamely grabbing a cricket bat to make up the numbers for a match with the neighbours is very much in the spirit of Eliza Bennet unselfconsciously striding through the mud to Netherfield. There’s a lot of Austen’s favourite creation to be found in this portrayal of the writer.

The thesis of the book was that in the breathless first flush of romance, Austen found much of the inspiration for her later work. Thus the film is peopled — perhaps a little too neatly — with prototypes for Austen’s best-known characters. Dame Maggie Smith is a scaldingly superior model for Lady Catherine de Bourgh; Julie Walters as Austen’s mother has a good deal more pragmatic common sense than Mrs Bennet but the kernel of social-climbing shallowness is evident.

The American actress Anne Hathaway plays Austen, and while she’s no doubt inauthentically limpid of eye and pearly of tooth, she has a sparky energy that conveys Austen’s fiercely quick wit. We’re introduced to her potential love interest Tom Lefroy (a raffish James McAvoy) in his natural habitat: Regency London’s pox-ridden, gin-sodden underbelly. He’s a reprobate with a wolf’s grin and he finds his exile to deepest Hampshire a cruel punishment for his youthful exuberance. He’s not prepared to find anything agreeable during his banishment, which is why his first encounter with Jane fizzes with mutual animosity.

The director, Julian Jarrold, who cut his teeth on television period pieces such as Great Expectations , injects some energy into the costume-drama formula with lively, inquisitive camerawork. His party sequences are as giddy as champagne bubbles — no wonder Jane is intoxicated by the thrill of it all.

Whether the loyal readers will abandon themselves quite as readily depends on their response to the more obviously fictionalised elements of the story — in a playful nod to Colin Firth’s pond-drenched Darcy, Jane catches a glimpse of her beau skinny-dipping on a heady summer’s day. And, without giving away the film’s climax, the screenplay has Jane and Tom come far closer to a life together than any evidence suggests.

But perhaps Austen’s fans will recognise something of the author’s playful wit in the film, and forgive the dramatic liberties.

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