Love & Friendship

Taking a lesser-known, epistolary work of Jane Austen, American director Whit Stillman polishes up and turns out one of the wittiest period films in ages. Love & Friendship, based on the posthumously published novella Lady Susan, zings with beautifully constructed barbs and observations, leading one to conclude, along with leading lady Kate Beckinsale, that ‘facts are horrid things’.

Beckinsale, in her best role for years, is the once-titular Lady Susan, a widow determined to make the most of herself and for herself in the late 18th century. With its themes of money, selfpreservation, society, betrayal and marriage, this often feels like an Oscar Wilde play, yet it could also be a slice of Horrible Histories or Blackadder – it has a crisp modernity and knowingness about it, and something of the present-day comic skit, with an occasionally improvised feel. As the Inbetweeners themselves might say, the film is big on ‘bants’ (or banter).

Characters are introduced by on-screen text, with descriptions of how handsome they are, or how rich. This feeds into the novella’s letter-writing structure while also stylising and distancing the movie. Notes are scribbled across the screen, or handed from character to character. At one point, James Fleet (so good at this sort of stuff) bumblingly reads aloud a letter from his daughter. His wife (Jemma Redgrave) patiently points out that he should refrain from ‘reading out the punctuation’.

Beckinsale has a confidante in the American Mrs Johnson, played by Chloë Sevigny, with whom the actress starred in one of her first American movies, The Last Days Of Disco, for this same director back in 1998. The pair spar menacingly, giggling at their devious machinations. Mr Johnson is played in all-too-brief cameos by Stephen Fry, who disapproves of the friendship and threatens to send his wife back to Connecticut if she continues consorting with Lady Susan. ‘The Atlantic passage is very cold this time of year,’ he glowers.

Then we come to Tom Bennett, a young British comic actor who almost steals the film away from Beckinsale, playing the role of Sir James, quite the dimmest toff in all of Georgian England. Some of his dithery behaviour is hilarious, particularly his puzzlement at the sight of peas.

Of course, Lady Susan would never quite allow anyone to better her, and Beckinsale ploughs on, exerting her formidable control and icy wit on all around her, including her own daughter (Morfydd Clark). So this is ultimately her picture, and this is really a tale of a woman’s intelligence getting her through the pitfalls of a patriarchal society. The men really don’t come out of it very well – there’s no Darcy in breeches over whom to swoon – and the big wedding scene is not really where the climax is headed.

Altogether, this is a most refreshing take on the British costume drama, smaller on budget though never feeling pinched – the costumes are great, the period houses and carriages resplendent. Such details, however, pale in comparison to Stillman’s sharp, elegant script. He’s always been a director slightly out of his time, an old, preppy head among the world of cool indie film-makers, but here he displays a light yet assured touch that says, yes, we can still get away with this kind of talky, witty movie – and my, does it work a treat.