Review: Love & Friendship
Kate Beckinsale is an unalloyed delight as Lady Susan Vernon in Love & Friendship, writer-director Whit Stillman's adaptation of Jane Austen's posthumously published epistolary novella, Lady Susan. Austen and Stillman go together like Rogers and Astaire, and Love & Friendship is an excellent reminder of Stillman's sterling wit and ease with upper class mores.
Described by various characters as "the most accomplished flirt in all of England," "a diabolical genius," and one most capable of "captivating deceit," Lady Susan is indeed a most masterful manipulator. Most of the fun to be had is in watching this undeniably attractive, recently widowed, financially threatened woman destroy every comfort in the lives of the British landed gentry and swat away every reproach or confrontation as if dealing with crippled mosquitoes. Naturally, Lady Susan feigns innocence at any harm done, any marriages broken, and any ambitions so dishonestly achieved; everything she does has always been for the sake of her eligible young daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark), though the young woman has the most unfortunate notion in her head that on shouldn't marry for money and improved social standing.
Lady Susan is not exactly the type to consider her own daughter's wants and needs. In fact, the supremely selfish Lady Susan is unlike any protagonist Austen, or any writer of the time for that matter, has put on the page. She's introduced as she decamps from one estate for her indiscretion with the very much married Lord Manwaring (Lochlann O'Mearáin), whose understandably upset wife Lady Lucy (Jenn Murray) writes to the fine and upstanding Mr. Johnson (Stephen Fry) of the havoc Lady Susan has wreaked. Mr. Johnson directs his American wife, Alicia (Chloë Sevigny), to sever her friendship with Lady Susan or else be shipped off to the wilds of Connecticut ("You'll be scalped!" Lady Susan exclaims), but Alicia secretly continues on as Lady Susan's confidante and sometime aider and abetter in her scheme to secure the wealthy but doltish Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett) as a husband for the reluctant Frederica.
In the meantime, Lady Susan and, later on, Frederica are welcomed into the home of Charles Vernon (Justin Edwards), her faithful brother-in-law whose wife Catherine (Emma Greenwell) is increasingly perturbed by Lady Susan's blossoming friendship with and influence over her younger brother Reginald (Xavier Samuel). Lady Susan may wield her widowhood and maternal motivations as symbols of her righteousness, but she is all too aware of her own precarious position as an unmarried woman so she is all too happy to encourage Reginald's romantic affections, partly to secure him for herself and partly to ensure that the path is cleared for Sir James to pursue Frederica.
It's evident that Stillman loves Beckinsale and Sevigny, who served as his leading ladies in 1998's The Last Days of Disco, which tracked two young Hampshire College graduates as they fell in and out of love whilst frequenting the New York City disco scene. Despite its stately houses, beautifully decorated interiors, lovely costumes, and luminous cinematography, Love & Friendship often takes on an airless quality when neither actress is on-screen perhaps because they, but particularly Beckinsale, command the action. The rest of the characters are all puppets either falling under Lady Susan's sway or, in the case of Catherine, seeing what's going on behind Lady Susan's facade but has nowhere near the level of intelligence required to deflect her maneuverings. How can they not pale in comparison to Lady Susan's plethora of pithy putdowns and mockingly self-aware lines like "Facts are horrid things"?
Love & Friendship
Directed by: Whit Stillman
Written by: Whit Stillman; based on Jane Austen's novella, Lady Susan
Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny, Morfydd Clark, Xavier Samuel, Justin Edwards, Emma Greenwell, Tom Bennett, Lochlann O'Mearáin, Jenn Murray, Jemma Redgrave, James Fleet, Kelly Campbell, Stephen Fry
