I mean, I would SO get drunk with Lady Susan. It’s like getting to watch 2 hours of Fanny Dashwood or Caroline Bingley or another of Austen’s bitchy minor characters, without wasting your time on the sweet and moral heroine. Oh, she follows social niceties to a T, but she’s a bitch who’s looking out only for herself, a social climber, a temptress of men, and happy to throw her daughter under the bus. What’s fun about Love & Friendship the movie is that the main character - Lady Susan, played by Kate Beckinsale - is actually a pretty horrible person. After seeing Barcelona, my mother famously said, “Well, THAT’S not going to win any Oscars!”Īlthough I’m an Austen fan, I admit I’ve never read Lady Susan - apparently not the same thing as Love and Freindship, a juvenile story also written by Austen and, confusingly, the source of this film’s title. * Note: if you’re going to watch any of these, note they’re VERY talky. Each of these films are dry, funny, sarcastic, and super talky (in an intellectualish way) look at the somewhat upper crust.* So it makes Stillman perfect, in my opinion, to adapt Jane Austen’s lesser known novella, Lady Susan - given Austen’s focus on the somewhat upper crust and a brainy, talky approach to plot and character. Stillman is a comedic-arty director who created a number of modern-set films that I adore, including Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco. I’m probably the only person in the Frock Flicks community who cares that the newest Jane Austen adaptation - Love & Friendship (2016) - was directed by Whit Stillman.
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