MAY 31, 2016
There was a period of time when I was Jane Austen’ed out.
By the late 1990s, there already were no less than 5 TV mini-series adaptations of “Pride & Prejudice” (and that’s excluding the later theatrical remakes, such as the 2004 Bollywood epic “Bride & Prejudice” and the infamous 2016’s “Pride & Prejudice & Zombies”). Then there’s countless remakes of “Emma,” “Mansfield Park,” “Northanger Abbey,” “Sense & Sensibility,” and on and on.
I can’t claim to have seen all of them, but I’ve seen a good chunk, and there are three Austen adaptations, all done in 1995, that still stand out in my mind — the British TV mini-series of “Pride & Prejudice” where Colin Firth became a star as a hot Mr. Darcy, Ang Lee’s “Sense & Sensibility” with an Oscar-winning script by Emma Thompson and a career-making performance by Kate Winslet, and probably the best of the lot, “Clueless,” Amy Heckerling’s contemporary but so true-to-the-novel adaptation of Austen’s “Emma.” (Though I don’t remember whether Austen ever coined the phrase “As if…”)
I can now add a fourth — Whit Stillman’s adaptation of Austen’s epistolary novella “Lady Susan,” now retitled “Love & Friendship.” I had never heard of “Lady Susan” before, so I came into it Austen-weary but hopeful. My hope paid off — if you listen carefully, it’s a hoot of a night at the movies.
Yes, it’s Austen, but a lot of the laughs came from the quips of Stillman. Though a long-time critical favorite, writer/director Whit Stillman is mostly unknown to the general public, thanks to the types of films he makes — witty dissections of the young contemporary bourgeoisie and the emptiness of their social-climbing lives. So when I had heard that he was taking on the very non-contemporary Jane Austen, I thought “How could this work?” How wrong I was to question him.
“Love & Friendship” begins in dynamic Austen fashion with two women fleeing into a coach, leaving an emotional family in their wake. The women in question are a widow, Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale), joined by her handmaiden Mrs. Cross (Kelly Campbell). We later learn that Lady Susan had been having an affair with the emotional family’s patriarch Lord Manwaring (Lochlann O’Mearain), who is described in the film’s title cards as a “divinely attractive man.” Lady Susan, now without a husband and a home, decides to crash at her in-laws’ palatial estate in hopes of bettering her station in life.
Lady Susan’s arrival is not welcomed by everyone. She initially plays the grateful houseguest but soon sets her marital sights on her handsome brother-in-law, Reginald De Courcy (Xavier Samuel), but her plans are continually thwarted by Reginald’s older sister Catherine Vernon (Emma Greenwell), who can see exactly what Lady Susan is doing.
Things get even more complicated with the unexpected arrival of Lady Susan’s daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark), who, unlike most Austen ingenues, is initially a bit of a brat. Lady Susan is quite displeased with her daughter, who has turned down the romantic advances of Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett), whose enormous wealth could have set the family up for life.
Then who should pop in but Sir James (people have a habit of popping in and out of estates in Austen World), and we can begin to understand why Frederica spurned him. You see, Sir James is a blithering idiot, a preening ninny, an absolute nincompoop who has never seen peas on a dinner plate. (He delights in calling them “tiny green balls” and a “novelty vegetable.”) Bennett is uproariously funny in the role, stealing every scene he is in.
With all these complications, advanced scheming is exhausting work, and Lady Susan can only rely on her American-born confidante Alicia Johnson (Chloë Sevigny) to vent on her frustration at husband-finding both for herself and her daughter, (Regarding children, Lady Susan observes, “Of course, when they’re small, there’s a sweetness that compensates for the dreadfulness that comes after.”) For her part, Alicia is ordered by her stern husband (Stephen Fry) never to associate with Lady Susan, or else he’ll force the ultimate punishment — he’ll send her back to…Connecticut! (If that happened, Lady Susan expresses fear that Alicia will surely be scalped.)
With all of her machinations seemingly going up in smoke, Lady Susan must come up with a grand plan to get what she and her daughter need. And it is in the grand plan that Stillman does some of his best work, tossing out not only witty barbs but delicately handling a third-act twist that could be seen as potentially tasteless and making it both hilarious and satisfying.
For me, though, the biggest surprise was Kate Beckinsale. Though I knew that she had worked with both Stillman and Sevigny in 1998’s “The Last Days of Disco,” I mostly associated her with her leather-clad action heroine Selene in the series of four “Underworld” movies and was surprised when she was cast as a Jane Austen heroine. I shouldn’t have doubted her. She’s absolutely delicious as Lady Susan, treating her most vile observations not as a gag line but as the most normal thing in the world, making them even funnier. I was impressed, to say the least.
If you see the ads or photos of “Love & Friendship,” you would not be to blame if you thought it might be something that belongs on PBS, whereas the heart and soul of Whit Stillman’s adaptation really belongs on Comedy Central.
GRADE: B+
