![\"Love](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/f\/ff\/Love_%26_Friendship_poster.png\")
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I am fond of Jane Austen,<\/strong> though I\u2019ve only read two of her novels. I\u2019m a huge fan of Whit Stillman. So when I review his latest effort, Love & Friendship<\/em> (which looks like it might be the big hit he\u2019s deserved for so long) my perspective is that of viewing Austen-land from Stillman-land. This is probably fairly unusual.<\/p>\n People have noted the similarities between Stillman\u2019s work and Austen\u2019s books from the beginning. Metropolitan<\/em>, his first movie, is self-consciously Austenian, a point paradoxically emphasized by the main character\u2019s insistence that he\u2019s never read Jane Austen because he prefers to read literary criticism of her. That\u2019s an exquisitely Austenian comment on Austen.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s what we also have in Love & Friendship<\/em>, based on an Austen novella, Lady Susan<\/em>. It\u2019s meta-Austen. It tells its story, comments on the story, and laughs gently at its comments. It\u2019s a lot of fun. It might be the perfect movie through which to introduce an intelligent consumer who\u2019s not familiar with Austen\u2019s work (I\u2019m sure there are such people; I\u2019m almost one of them) to her world.<\/p>\n Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale), the main character, is \u201cthe most notorious flirt in England.\u201d A young and beautiful widow, we meet her in a silent-movie preface (with subtitles) in which she is driven from the home of a relation, having broken hospitality by seducing the man of the house (she thinks this response shockingly unjust). She then goes to stay with other relations, where she attempts to win a handsome younger man as her own husband while scheming to marry her virtuous daughter off to the stupidest man in England, James Martin (Tom Bennett). Bennett\u2019s scenes are the funniest in the movie \u2013 he\u2019s Wodehousian in his affable ignorance. He\u2019s certain there are Twelve Commandments (general ignorance of the Ten Commandments is a running joke in this movie \u2013 a comment, I assume, on our own times). Lady Susan is Donald Trumpian in her invincible self-regard and lack of concern for the feelings of others. She\u2019d be unbearable if forces of cosmic justice, acting behind the scenes, didn\u2019t conspire against her machinations \u2013 something she would deeply resent if she were aware of it.<\/p>\n I liked Love & Friendship<\/em> a lot, and suspect I\u2019ll like it more when I\u2019ve seen it a few more times (which I\u2019m sure I will). I was pleasantly surprised by the crowd at the showing I attended \u2013 much larger than I expected, and mostly gray-haired, people who I suspect don\u2019t go out to the movies much anymore.<\/p>\n Highly recommended. Not for kids, because much of the humor is sexually sophisticated (though not smutty at all), and because the vocabulary hovers at a high altitude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am fond of Jane Austen, though I\u2019ve only read two of her novels. I\u2019m a huge fan of Whit Stillman. So when I review his latest effort, Love & Friendship (which looks like it might be the big hit he\u2019s deserved for so long) my perspective is that of viewing Austen-land from Stillman-land. This … Continue reading Film review: Whit Stillman’s ‘Love & Friendship’<\/span>