Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan in "Love & Friendship."
One can see the kernels of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility in the bits and pieces of Love & Friendship, a new film based on Lady Susan, one of Austin's epistolary novels (i.e. a novel written as a series of letters). Definitely one of Austen's most underrated works, Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, The Last Days of Disco, Damsels in Distress) gives the lady her due. He's taken the unfinished work and injected rich characterizations that he's deepened from what a narrator might not be able to convey. His Lady Susan is strong, resourceful, and irresistible in her conniving ways.
Stillman, the first ever to put this novella on screen, certainly understands the workings of Austen's language, allowing for the words that Lady Susan and others use to paint the picture of the time period, the ways and means of the privileged class, and the definition of a women's role in 18th century English society. He also uses her epistolary format with short scenes that firstly introduce characters than weave them all together.
Stillman's creative use of a way to introduce each character in the early part of the film again serves as a way to amp up Austen's cynicism about the class structure of the time period. It truly is a comedy of manners.
One of the most interesting choices is how the writer/director has created a back story for the character of Alicia Johnson (played by Stillman muse Chloë Sevigny).
She's an American Loyalist exile. Stillman gave the character more of a backstory than Austen revealed in her letters. In Stillman's mind, Johnson is an American Tory exile, Americans on the wrong side of the War of Independence, who returned to England. Stillman did his research, obviously immersing himself in the time period. So, he created her to be a scandalous American Tory exile and had Sevigny in mind, no doubt, from the beginning to play her. As Lady Susan's friend, Johnson has equal moments of her own candor and Sevigny brings the characterization to bold brilliance.
Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale.
Set in the 1790s, earlier than most Austen tales, Love & Friendship opens with Lady Susan arriving at Churchill, the estate of her in-laws, to wait out rumors about her dalliances circulating throughout "polite" society. She's also hoping to secure a husband not only for herself while at Churchill, but for her daughter, Frederica, gloriously played by Morfydd Clark.
Kate Beckinsale has a field day as the self seeking Lady Susan Vernon adding just the right amount of tartness to create a split decision about her. Do you envy her manipulation or do you hate her for it? Beckinsale, the first to create Lady Susan on the screen, uses the opportunity to somehow invoke the inference of a wink at the camera, which adds to her cunning and gives a point of view that the audience is in on her sly secrets.
Almost as delicious as Stillman's love for Austen's language and his own imagination so brought to life in the work, is the immersion of the time period. Costume designer Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh has created a wardrobe that also furthers the characters. In fact, the designer has said that to mirror the Lady Susan's transition from widower to available lady, costumes begin as black and then move to grey, lilac, purple and suddenly bold, bold red. Absolutely, stunning.
Yes, Love & Friendship is vivid in so many ways and deserves to be catalogued as a great Austen novel on film. Lady Susan and Jane Austen would be proud.
Love & Friendship opens Friday in South Florida:
- Miami: AMC Aventura, AMC Sunset Place, O Cinema Miami Beach, Coral Gables Art Cinema
- Fort Lauderdale: Gateway Ft. Lauderdale
- Boca Raton: Living Room, Regal Shadowood, Palace Boca Raton
- Delray: Movies at Delray Beach
