Cert U
‘Tis the time of year for a costume drama and this month we bring you this outstanding example. Sight and Sound called Love and Friendship one of its best films of 2016, Adapted from Jane Austen’s novel ‘Lady Susan’ with Kate Beckinsale as the eponymous Lady Susan, who newly widowed, finds herself at the mercy of relatives to sustain her now lost lifestyle.
Dir: Whit Stillman, Ireland/France/Netherlands, 90mins, 2016.
Programme Notes
Set around 1800 (the film being a ‘period’, rather than a ‘costume’, drama), the central character is Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale), a relatively young, impoverished noblewoman forced to take up temporary residence with her reluctant debutante daughter at her in-laws’ estate. Lady Susan’s personality is devious, shrewd, calculating, unprincipled and cunningly flirtatious – which might have been problematic for Beckinsale in portraying such an unsympathetic character. However, she gets to work with relish and skill and pulls it off. It is a good role, a big, splashy
star role, but she makes the very best of it.
Morfydd Clark plays Lady Susan’s rather sullen daughter Frederica, Tom Bennett the witless potential suitor Sir James Martin (a master of the social faux pas) and Xavier Samuel the highly eligible bachelor Reginald De Courcy, whom both mother and daughter fancy. Lady Susan is also a matchmaker and, luckily for her (and us), she has a confidante in the
equally chilly but somehow mesmerising Alicia Johnson (Chloe Sevigny).
Jane Austen’s acid wit and satire of the social mores of the day are of course what gives the film its sparkling dialogue and narrative drive – it’s a refreshing change for an Austen adaptation to be something other than Pride and Prejudice!
For an American director, Stillman gets the essential nature of Austen’s writing pretty much right and properly conveys the idea that his film is a work of respect and a labour of love. Love and Friendship is only his fifth feature film in 32 years – after Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), The Last Days of Disco (1998), starring both Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale, and Damsels in Distress (2011).
Kate Beckinsale won the Best Actress award for her role as Lady Susan at the 2016 Evening Standard British Film Awards and at the 2017 London Film Critics’ Circle Awards. Whit Stillman won the Best Adapted Screenplay award at both the 2016 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards and the 2016 St Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards.
Comments
Stylish and witty but not always easy to follow!
The guile of women! Hard to believe it was her first novel (sic). Sound rather muffled and dialogue too fast
A good presentation but sound muffled and didn’t synchronise with my hearing aid. Speaking parts too fast
Very jolly! Reminded me of the Contract Draughtsman! (sic)
Speaking parts too fast so much of the conversation lost. Loved the costumes, though!
Too much reliance on dialogue
As I am German, sub-titles would (have been) great. Maybe an option to put to the audience. Thank you!