Love & Friendship

"Facts are horrid things." Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale)

We have lived through countless adaptations of Jane Austen's late 18th and early 19th-century romances, not the least Pride and Prejudice, but I guarantee none of us has seen the likes of Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship, which uses Austen's novella, Lady Susan, as its source. The lady's quote above should give you the flavor of her sweet venom that manipulates the most stolid and wary gentleman.

Where the usual screen version is chock-full of sumptuous estates, carriages, and costumes, Stillman's take starts with rich language, at times delivered with screwball pace, and adds the other elements as mere backdrop to drop-dead acid discourse with the upper-class men ample fodder for Austen's satirical pen.

Any man's match and then some, the Lady says this about Stephen Fry's Mr. Johnson, "Too old to be governable, and too young to die." When she learns that he could serve his wife a punishment by moving to Connecticut, Lady Susan says, "You could be scalped." Even the Americans are not spared her withering estimation.

As a woman in a man's world, Lady Susan navigates the best way she can: Her tongue and her lovely visage are formidable weapons in her quest to provide comfortable living for herself and her underachieving daughter, Frederica (Morfydd Clark).

Even the sub-plots are masterfully rendered, humorous in themselves but never overshadowing the main action of Lady Susan working everyone for her comfort and advancement. When Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett) is in a scene, watch a future comedy star in the making, but note how he doesn't dominate the scene but rather enriches it with his endearing blockheadness.

Love & Friendship is one of the finest Austen adaptations in film history and surely a brilliant testimony to the enduring charm of romance and its hyper-form, the screwball comedy.

Now here is a film which have divided audiences and critics significantly. Whereas critics have hailed Love and friendship a penetrating, brilliant dark comedy, ordinary moviegoers are certainly not as thrilled. I think a good litmus test for whether one would enjoy Love And Friendship is whether one enjoys the other Austen adaptations, or Austen novels. Most people who like the elegant, circumlocutory dialogue in the Austen novels(and films) would enjoy this film, for this film is extremely dialogue-heavy. Much of the humour is also hidden in the wry, witty dialogue, especially that from Lady Susan. And what a character Lady Susan is. Played by the inimitable Kate Beckinsale, Lady Susan is a master manipulator, a crafting, smug, witty, yet eminently likable character. Kate Beckinsales simply offers a powerhouse performance- she has a beautifully posh, confident voice, with such gorgeous inflexions that really brings the full cunning and the amiability of her character to life. Susan is a glib, eloquent, smooth talker able to wheedle her way out of any difficulty. But perhaps the films main selling point is also its problem- the presence of endless dialogue in this film may prove weary for many viewers. In a script which is so elegantly Austen, that is to say roundabout and difficult to decipher(usually the highlight of any Austen adaptation), having so much dialogue means so much brainwork, and many of the films witticisms may easily fly over a viewers head. The film may also lose some of its enjoyability as its pace slows in the middle section. But on the whole, Love And Friendship should be a treat for lovers of Austen, though it's dialogue-heavy approach, and it's reliance of comedy in dialogue over comedy in situation may prove difficult for some viewers.

The funniest character in the film is James Martin. He steals every scene he's in and each time he was on the screen I couldn't stop laughing. Unfortunately, he isn't in a lot of the film, and the rest of the movie's humor comes in the form of pithy one liners at the end of every scene. Sometimes I'd chuckle at those, but that'd be about it. There aren't any weak links in the cast, they all do a great job with what they're given, but I wish they were given something better. The movie moves at an incredibly slow pace, and with not a lot ever going on, it often feels like I'm being read a Jane Austen novel rather than watching a movie adaptation. The movie isn't "bad" by any means but there's so little going for it that I would consider noteworthy I can't really find myself ever wanting to sit through Love & Friendship again. Maybe if you absolutely LOVE period dramas from a design standpoint or are a huge Jane Austen fan, you'll get more out of this movie than I did, but otherwise there isn't much here.

Here's my beef with Love and Friendship. They told the story. Emphasis on told. Not sure if they didn't know how to build the character backgrounds and cultural implications into an hour and a half-ish flick or what. It's like they assumed you understood some things but, needed to explain the bulk of the story via Lady Susan. Instead of building the story via scenes and acting and playing out the idea and letting the audience think and work out the connections....leave a little to figure out if you got it right or not, Beckinsale's character basically narrarated everything that was going on. As we walked out, I said to my wife, Downton Abbey left a pretty high bar for period pieces. The Jane Austin story of relationships and status and morality was interesting enough. The presentation just plain left it all in the book. You read a book, and you know you're reading a book. Director Stillman just had the book read to us by actors. It wasn't as interesting as that may sound either. I don't know if it was budget over directing but, this was a disappointing movie-fication of a book. Even the period environment was stumbling and stiff. Oh yeah, a hand maiden should do this. Oh yeah, the footman or, doorman or butler would do this. It came across as a poorly staged amateur play, where there was no fluidity. Other reviews said you'd be laughing out loud. Maybe a few snickers and giggles. I was glad it was only 90-ish minutes. If you're coming to this because Downton Abbey made you a fan of that period of England, I'm sorry to tell you, you won't be satisfied by Love and Friendship.

Kate Beckinsale trades in her latex for hats and crinolines to take on Jane Austen in this moderately tongue-in-cheek adaptation of her posthumously-published novella in which pert modern misses Beckinsale & Sevigny dress up in a succession of magnificent period creations and sit about talking (and talking) about, well, love and friendship rather as Whit Stillman's characters used to do in twentieth century Manhattan.

It's all agreeable and good-looking, although the settings feel totally unlived in and everybody sounds as if they're simply reciting dialogue they've memorised in advance. Which of course they have.