Francesca Rudkin: The Friend and Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

The Friend  

New York City writer Iris finds her comfortable, solitary life thrown into disarray after her closest friend and mentor bequeaths her a Great Dane named Apollo. The huge dog immediately creates practical problems for Iris, from furniture destruction to eviction notices, as well as more existential ones. Yet as Iris finds herself unexpectedly bonding with Apollo, she begins to come to terms with her past, and her own creative inner life. 

  

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life  

Desperately single and plagued by writer's block, Agathe gets invited to the Jane Austen Writers' Residency in England. Caught in an unexpected romantic triangle, she must let go of her insecurities to decide what she really wants for herself. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at b.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Believe Themself, be Jure in the room still.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
And the band they asked to have them there to
see it.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
In the basement.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Your Heart Simon's Bay.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
That is Taylor Swift Only Tay Tay could announced her
brand new album on sports podcast and still draw gazillions
of viewers. So the Life of a show Girl is
going to be the title of her twelfth original record.
She joined her boyfriend Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelcey
on his podcast this week for a rare interview appearance,
and she revealed the album's cover art. I think the

(01:00):
album is going to come out at the start of
next month, October third. I think they're going to be
releasing Life for a Showgirl, So no doubt there will
be considerable hype leading up to that date. What were
six seven weeks away? Right now, it is twenty three
minutes to ten. Time to get your film picks for
this weekend. Francisca Radkin is here with us this morning.
Koda Good Morning had two films to work through this morning.

(01:22):
The first stars Bill Murray and Naomi Watson. Let's have
a listen to the friend I as.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
I need to talk with him. It's about the dog.
I wanted to ask if you could take him.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
No, I can't.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
No, this is what Walter wanted after he died.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Why would he say that you were his best friend?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Okay, tell us about the friend, Francisca.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
So I've got a theme today, My themes authors and
both the films that we're talking about today. This is
an adaptation of Sigrid new News's twenty eighteen novel about
a woman dealing with a friend's suicide. It's very heartfelt.
It's a tender film, very gracefully acted by no Watts
as Iris. She is an author, she's also a teacher,

(02:11):
and she has this dear friend, Walter, who she sort
of works with and has looked after and managed quite
a lot, because Walter's had a complicated life of He's
got numerous ex wives and hidden children and like to
have affairs with his students and things. So he has
quite a complicated past and he passes away. He commits suicide,

(02:33):
much to everybody's surprise, and he, as you heard in
the trailer, he wishes that Iris would take Apollo, his dog,
now his dog is a great dang And this is
a very New York based film, and Iris lives in
a very small apartment which is rent controlled and no
pets are allowed, so this obviously is going to cause
a bit of an issue. And what really happens throughout

(02:54):
this film is we kind of watch how, you know,
dealing with this dog and what to do with the dog,
and the confusion of being sort of asked to look
after the dog works alongside just our natural grief of
dealing with the loss of someone and the confusion around
this particular situation why Walter decided to go and be
so organized as to you know, playing where his dog

(03:17):
was going to go anyway, So there's lots of questions,
lots to sort of do. What I liked about this
film was Naomi Watts is playing a middle aged woman,
and she looks like a middle aged woman, and she
acts like a middle aged woman, and it's got an authentic,
sort of authentic kind of quality to it. Very well acted.
Apparently not as a cerber because the book apparently the

(03:38):
book was quite a cerbic about Walter, but I love
the New york ness of it Jack, and really it's
a book about companionship. And it's a book about support
and how we all need it in life. And you know,
Iris gets it from somewhere she didn't expect.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, that's so pretty good. Okay, I'm interested in that.
So that is the Friend. It's showing in cinemas at
the moment. Stars Bill Murray and Naomi What's next up?
Tell us about this wonderfully titled film, Jane Austin Wrecked
My Life.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
So I am loving rom coms at the moment because
I feel like a whole lot of directors are coming
along going. You know, you don't have to make a
rom com in the same formula that they've always been
made in. It's a great genre. Let's have some fun
with it. You can break the rules a little bit.
And this is a French English production and it stars
Camille Rutherford as a Gut and a Gut too. Is
an author. She works in this beautiful Parisian bookshop that

(04:30):
makes you just want to go to a bookshop immediately.
She has writer's block. She's single, She's got this best friend, Felix,
so she's not sure whether actually there's something more there.
She's a little awkward, she overthinks everything a little clumsy.
She's just basically stuck in a rut. And a friend
of hers sends in an application for her to attend

(04:51):
a Jane Austen Residency writers group and she gets accepted,
which and she of course feels like she's very much
an impostor at this thing, and off she goes. And
this is sort of supposed to kind of jold her
out of her rut. It's really charming. It's kind of
it's kind of Richard Curtis like, with sort of the

(05:11):
delightful kind of clumsiness that the characters have, but not
quite as outright funny. But I really grew this character,
really grew on me. At first, she's a little a
little hard to become fond of, and then I just
loved her individuality and the way she just does things
in her own little way, and I became really fond
of her and hoped for the best. So there's both

(05:32):
these films are sort of the lovely, kind of pleasant
Sunday afternoon watchers.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yeah, this sounds great. Okay, that's Jane Austin Wrecked My Life.
That showing in cinemas now as well. Francesca's first film
is The Friend Hey Francisca. Did you see the New
York Times and their big effort to do the hundred
best films of the century so far?

Speaker 3 (05:53):
I guess, But what are they up to?

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Name number one? Yeah, the name number one? So for
anyone who hasn't seen it. They went through this thing
where they went and contacted heaps of filmmakers and actors
and writers and producers and directors and stuff. And then
they also opened it up to public voting.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
The public.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, so yeah, And I think they said something like
two hundred thousand submissions in the public voting, which is amazing.
And so they've got a list of the top hundred
films of the century so far. And I went through
the list, and I've got to say I was surprised
at how it's not how few kind of arty films

(06:33):
they were, but I was kind of pleasantly surprised by
how mainstream some of the films were.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
You know, Yeah, what was number one?

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Parasite?

Speaker 3 (06:41):
Oh yes, I think I have seen that list.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
I think that's a good call. Parasite, I mean, not
having seen nearly like I reckon, I've probably seen a
quarter of the films on one hundred, maybe Slaying more thirty,
but I reckon, I mean Parasite. Well, Parasite was a
very good film. Yeah, a little goal for you. The
good thing is I've just got heaps of time at
the moment, just heaps and heaps of available times. So

(07:05):
I'm imagined in the conversation actually just getting home after
the show today saying to my wife, Look, Francesca sees
actually that I just need to spend a whole lot
less time looking after the baby and a whole lot
more time watching movies.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
You can give it a whil Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Exactly, Yeah, yeah, we'll turn into another parasite going to film,
I think if we're not careful. Hey, thank you so much,
have a great weekend and we will catch you soon.
Francisca Rudkin, our film reviewer. This week's picks The Friend
and Jane Austin Wrecked My Life will have details for
both of those up on the News Talks CB website.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, Listen live
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