Retitled Love & Friendship, Stillman’s adaptation stars Kate Beckinsale, who gives her best performance in years as Lady Susan Vernon, a handsome and self-absorbed high-society widow whose favorite pastime is playing with others’ affections.
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Writer-director Whit Stillman is a master at capturing the bourgeoisie youth of NY, and his skills translate surprisingly well to the world of Jane Austen, the setting for his latest, “Love and Friendship”.
The event at the Phoenix Picturehouse in Walton Street will take place after a 6.15pm screening of the film.
Those who prefer the actress wearing skin-tight black leather battling werewolves and vampires (in the Underworld franchise) should be made aware that the period costumes look mighty fetching indeed on Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny (with whom she co-starred in Stillman’s 1998 comedy The Last Days of Disco), who plays Alicia Johnson, the American expatriate who believes every word her best friend Lady Susan tells her – even when all evidence points to the contrary. Lady Susan is essentially a sociopath, but she’s extremely entertaining to watch, and Stillman’s screenplay is full of bone-dry humor and some hilarious one-liners. There’s a similar dynamic between the two in “Love & Friendship”, with Beckinsale as the motormouth who never stops her constant analysis of the world, and Sevigny as the softer friend who nevertheless follows suit. She seeks to marry the dashing Reginald De Courcy (Xavier Samuel), younger brother of her sister-in-law Mrs. Catherine Vernon (Emma Greenwell).
Suddenly the wind blows in an age-appropriate rival: Lady Susan’s gentle daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark). Threatened by her daughter’s potential to come in-between her burgeoning romance with Reginald, she attempts to fast-track a marriage with the disgracefully rich but outrageously foolish Sir James Martin, played with scene-stealing aplomb by Tom Bennett. As Susan tries to manipulate circumstances in her favor, she huffs, “Facts are such horrid things”.
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.
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Lady Susan Vernon is scheming, manipulative, ethically compromised and endlessly resourceful, where her fortunes and romantic prospects are concerned. Does nothing warm her heart? Or rather, Susan mostly chats and gossips while Alicia takes a glowing, vicarious delight in what her friend gets up to.
