Love & Friendship

Whit Stillman is one of those easily typecast directors, the sort of auteur who can be described as a WASPish analog to Woody Allen, albeit one without the knack for churning out a film a year. In fact, he has only made five films over the past 26 years, probably because the sort of dialogue-heavy comedies of manners in which he specializes aren't viewed as terribly lucrative business ventures.

On the other hand, whatever difficulties Stillman may have experienced in getting his movies done has inoculated him from the sort of self-repetition that has afflicted Allen. For a certain cinematic epicure, a Whit Stillman film is a major event.

Heretofore, Stillman has written all of his films (and was nominated for an Oscar for the script of his first movie, 1990's Metropolitan), but his period comedy Love & Friendship is based on a posthumously published little-read work by Jane Austen called Lady Susan. And while I haven't read the novel -- or novella -- I'm told it's an epistolary work, which means that Stillman has ­done considerable rejiggering to convert it to film. (Enough to support Stillman's tie-in novel based on his movie based on Austen's book that's due to be published by Little, Brown in August.)

Lady Susan consists of letters sent back and forth from protagonist Lady Susan Vernon, a "really excessively pretty" intelligent widow of around 35 who uses her considerable feminine wherewithal to seduce and manipulate the generally stupid men in her orbit -- and her American confidant Alicia Johnson, a similarly Machiavellian schemer married to a dull and sensible man. In Stillman's film, these two self-interested characters (who skew more toward sober versions of Absolutely Fabulous' Edina and Patsy than the likes of Lizzie Bennet and Emma Woodhouse) are played, respectively, by Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny, both of whom also starred in Stillman's 1998 movie The Last Days of Disco. Here, they do not write letters but chat and gossip. Or rather, Susan mostly chats and gossips while Alicia takes a glowing, vicarious delight in what her friend gets up to.

Which is, typical of Austen's tales, securing a future for her and her daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark), whom Susan describes as a "stupid girl" and who is thoroughly and rightly terrified of her sophisticated and intelligent mother. As the film opens -- in a cheekily amusing way we won't spoil -- Lady Susan has decided to pay a visit to her in-laws, Charles (Justin Edwards) and Catherine (Emma Greenwell), at Churchill, their country estate. Catherine, who seems to be the only person able to see through Susan's impeccable manners and uncommon beauty to her cold, cold heart (Catherine describes Susan as "the serpent in Eden's garden"), is naturally suspicious. Especially after Susan meets and begins a flirtation with Catherine's eligible younger brother Reginald De Courcy (Xavier Samuel).

But Susan's plans are disrupted by the sudden arrival of Frederica, who has run away from school (and shall not be taken back). Sensing that Reginald is intrigued by Frederica's gentle nature and goodness, Susan invites the silly (but very rich) Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett) to visit her at Churchill, intending to foist the poor man off on her horrified daughter. ("But marriage is for one's whole life!" Frederica cries. "Not in my experience," Susan answers.)

Filmed in Ireland in suitably airy Georgian rooms, Love & Friendship isn't one of those muddily authentic costume dramas, but has about it something of the feel of a screwball comedy. There's a bit of Preston Sturges in the film, and while the dialogue is set in period vocabulary, it's delivered in a way that feels quite modern. There's a delightful tone to the film and Beckinsale -- who has never impressed me before -- is wonderful as the somewhat salty center of the confection.

If there's a criticism to be made, it's that the movie lands rather softly, and unless you're diagramming the various relationships you might not quite be sure who winds up with whom at the end. And it would have been nice to have given Stephen Fry a little more to do as Alicia's husband, though his constant threatening to send her back across the pond takes on a darker meaning when you realize the movie is set in 1790 and the Colonies have only recently been divorced from the Crown.

While it has been observed that the pairing of Stillman and Austen seemed inevitable, I suspect that the film may not play as well for some dedicated Austenites as it might for a general audience. Stillman has more than put his stamp on the material. Apparently he rewrote Austen's ending and made other changes. But perhaps in using Austen for his purposes, he's merely staying true to the complex, self-interested spirit of Lady Susan.

MovieStyle on 06/03/2016