There wasn’t a whole lot of reading Jane Austen on the set of the romantic-comedy The Jane Austen Book Club. Just ask actress Maggie Grace, the 24-year-old actress best known for playing Shannon Rutherford in the television series Lost. She approached rehearsals for this film with the vigor and enthusiasm of a grad student.

“We had a fake book club, and we were supposed to read Emma,” recalls Grace, who went above and beyond writer/director Robin Swicord’s course requirements by not only reading her assigned book but also the rest of the daunting Austen canon.

As for the rest of the cast, Oscar-nominated actress Maria Bello (A History of Violence) sums up their literary progress bluntly. “Some of the cast members who will not be named watched the movies. Some cast read the cliff notes.” Shame on them.

The Varsity caught up with Swicord and some of the film’s stars last week during the Toronto International Film Festival. Grace, and Bello joined actors Amy Brenneman, Kathy Baker, and Jimmy Smits to discuss who read what in preparation for the shooting of The Jane Austen Book Club.

When Smits claimed to have “revisited” Emma, a book he says he read back in university, Amy Brenneman (of Judging Amy fame) was quick to pounce his dubious verb choice. “Did you actually re-read it, or did you just think about it a little?” Needless to say, Smits dodged the question.

It’s possible that this lackluster approach to primary sources could have something to do with Austen’s overall relevance in the film. Dealing with the romantic trials and tribulations of five modern-day Sacramento women, The Jane Austen Book Club presents the Regency-era novelist as merely a framework for which the problems of the group are viewed.

Absent from the film, which itself is based on Karen Joy Fowler’s novel of the same name, are Austen’s scathing critiques of the aristocratic class system and her calls for a more modern approach to everyday life. “Those are themes that recur through all of her novels,” admits Swicord. “And I didn’t go after that. It just didn’t exist in the novel that I was adapting.”

By shamelessly stripping Austen of what so many contemporary critics have prized her for, and leaving only the romantic skeletons of her works, it’s easy to see why many might consider The Jane Austen Book Club nothing more than a formulaic chick-flick, which was a label that Brenneman was not pleased to hear.

“I was in a Michael Mann movie,” Brenneman retorted, referring to her role alongside Robert DeNiro in the popular crime drama Heat. “I was in a hugely macho movie, and I did it because I thought my character was worth doing. I feel like our job as artists is to break up these stereotypes and actually depict humanity.”

Brenneman, a Harvard graduate, makes a valid point in defending her shameless choice to take on The Jane Austen Book Club and any other film that may cater to a specific gender niche. Yet it is still to be seen how this film will sit with actual Austen buffs (they do exist!).

However, one indication may be hiding in Maria Bello’s response to the question of whether she now has a new appreciation for Austen’s novels. Her answer, “Nope.”

The Jane Austen Book Club opens in Toronto on September 28.