Jane Austen has long been haunting Whit Stillman’s films. A bookish socialite during cotillion season alludes to Austen novels while making polite conversation. A Darcy-esque suitor emerges in Studio-54-era New York. Above all, Stillman’s subject, like Austen before him, is the morals and love lives of the haute bourgeoisie. So it is little surprise that Stillman has finally gone and adapted a Jane Austen novel, and the results are easily the most delightful of his filmography.
Love & Friendship is the adaptation of Austen’s lost epistolary novel, Lady Susan, that was published well after her death. Like all Jane Austen stories, this one is set in several grand country homes where the potential marital bondings of various free agents power the engine of the plot. Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale) is a gorgeous recent widow who terrorizes the wives of the British countryside. She has recently left the Manwaring family on bad terms to move to the house of her deceased husband’s brother. Lady Susan’s daughter (Morfydd Clark) is forced to join them after being expelled from school, and Lady Susan is trying to marry her to a wealthy buffoon (Tom Bennett). Lady Susan’s dead husband’s brother’s wife’s brother, Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel), is the top male prize of the movie, whom both Lady Susan and her daughter compete over. If you are confused, don’t blame the reviewer. The tangle of characters and their relation to one another feels unbearably complex until it snaps into place – such is the way of the 19th century plot.
Stillman continues his new approach since Damsels in Distress of a judicious use of gimmicks (for example, the introduction of characters in brief shots of them with their name underneath). Here, it allows him to have fun with the novelistic style of the material, introducing a tone of light irony that services the story well. But beyond style, Austen provides a ready-made universe that lets Stillman’s dialogue shine. Where the stilted, WASP-y dialogue that is characteristic of Stillman movies had started losing more and more rhythm until the decided awkwardness of Damsels in Distress, his quick, clever patter is reinvigorated in the hands of Kate Beckinsale in this Edwardian and, perhaps more importantly, novelistic setting. We can also detect in the margins of the film that she is prone to repeating her little speeches. In fact many of the characters’ beau mots are clearly contrived and often repeated. Stillman has finally started poking holes in façade of his hyper-articulate characters to hilarious effect. This subject has brought out all of Stillman’s strengths and glosses over his weaknesses.
In Stillman’s first feature, Metropolitan, Audrey Rouget, asks her romantic interest, Tom Townsend, what Jane Austen novels he has read. None – he responds. He only reads criticism, thus efficiently ingesting both the novel’s content and the critic’s take at the same time. Audrey is perturbed, but she is unable to dissuade him of his ways. Love & Friendship provides the best rebuttal to Tom Townsend yet – the original provides pleasures that a critical take can’t really replicate.
