A Thread for Whit Stillman's "Love & Friendship"

This adaptation of minor Austen is a good idea as concept: less well known than the major novels, less expectations. And it works! Kate Beckinsale in her best role to date as the schemer after a perfect moneyed marriage.

In some ways his most formally perfect work. At 91 minutes it doesn't overstay its welcome. Crisp editing too.

http://stanforddaily.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/KateBeckinsale_SLIDER-660x330.jpg

I'm a huge fan (though I haven't seen his last one before this because ugh, Greta Gerwig); just bought the trilogy on Blu-Ray. Will definitely check this out as soon as it's streaming on Amazon (no theater near me has it showing at a convenient time).

Look forward to this. It's a goofy and decidedly un-sentimental novelette, but still more 'sensible' than most of Austen's crazy ass juvenilia where cheating, murderin' and cannibalism are matters of course.

will watch. eventually. my brother-in-law did not do the crisp editing on this one. i am still scratching my head over that last movie.

I was laughing every three minutes on average. Beckinsale is po-faced perfection.

love the Beckinsale.

This movie was really wonderful!

i couldn't watch that tv thing he did and was afraid he'd fell off, but heard only great things about this..

though I haven't seen his last one before this because ugh, Greta Gerwig

gerwig is rly w/o compare for best american actress of her generation but, even apart from that, this is a bad reason not to watch a film by a director you like

one of the most interesting things abt this - kinda cf spring breakers - is the pleasant surprise of stillman's agility as a director; lots of beautiful small touches & well measured moments, in a particular understated way unapparent in the other films

Not liking Gerwig is a good reason for not watching a film by a director you like. She isn't just bad, she's toxic.

Really looking forward to this. His last one sucked but encouraged by all the good press this time. Glad he's sort of back.

The trailer for this is hysterically funny. I hope it doesn't use all the jokes though.

Kate is on a UK chat show now and she is incredibly beautiful and shockingly funny.

I thought it was quite funny

Steady on.

quite!

This was great - saw it just now. One of the most egregiously joke-ruining trailers of all time though

last days of disco on the cable TV this evening, presumably b/c of connection to this film

surprised that i remembered so much of it so well, and so fondly

i never knew quite what to make of whit stillman back in the day; he's easy to make fun of. but his films have something. even the pedestrian visual style has a kind of appealing limpid quality, much like some of eric rohmer.

chloe sevigny had very nice hair in 1998.

I was in an AMC theatre last night, and they had a freebie table with X-Men swag and...swag for this film.

Very strange.

What kind of swag??

last days of disco on the cable TV this evening, presumably b/c of connection to this film

surprised that i remembered so much of it so well, and so fondly

i never knew quite what to make of whit stillman back in the day; he's easy to make fun of. but his films have something. even the pedestrian visual style has a kind of appealing limpid quality, much like some of eric rohmer.

I think the first film that has made me look forward to reading the (adaptation / completion / interpretation of the) novel ... Conn. jokes (from Jane?) :)

Damsels in Distress was appalling through.

i like gerwig

beckinsale has made so many terrible looking sexy vampire movies I'd written her off but saw her on colbert or something the other week and she was so charming I kind of fell in love with her.

What kind of swag??

― sexy dander (Stevie D(eux)), Friday, May 27, 2016 8:53 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Mini-posters and promo postcards, beside the same (and buttons and stickers and stuff) for X-Men.

I loved it.

Saw it with a friend earlier. Beyond a "liked it" there was nothing much to say and we absolutely didn't waste a second on it. Some wit and design aside its a nice film to take a friend to see.

Could see what all the Kate Beckinsdale business was all about, she has been in so much awful shit. Overall though Trifle.jpg

this movie rules

a thoroughly entertaining trifle

the guy who played the idiot rich farmer seemed v much like Ricky Gervais

Beyond a "liked it" there was nothing much to say and we absolutely didn't waste a second on it.

My conclusion too. Beckinsale's best.

Adam Thirlwell in the NYRB (SPOILERS):

It’s a quieter, English-country-house-version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses—where a ruthless woman is humiliated. But in Stillman’s rendering, something has happened to its finale. True, Lady Susan is now married to Sir James Martin and Frederica is married to Reginald De Courcy. But in the original, it is Reginald who broke off the relationship with Lady Susan, when he discovered the extent of her duplicity. In Love & Friendship, it is Lady Susan’s decision. It is not humiliation, but quiet control. At one point, her confidante, Mrs. Johnson, observes to Lady Susan that in fact to marry Sir James herself would not be an irrational project, given her precarious financial position as a widow: “I would rather be married to my own husband than dependent on the hospitality of others.” Stillman’s Lady Susan will not be Blanche DuBois. Her stratagems can be appreciated not as immoralities but as moving pirouettes of social survival.

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/05/27/love-and-friendship-unserious-austen/

Enjoyed the Soto take

Idiot rich farmer was very Harry Enfield (Tim nice but dim)

I want to read a Maoist take on this. Burn these fucking estates!

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/film-week-love-friendship/

Like Romney and all but this made me laugh:

As a supposedly literate Englishman, I must confess a heresy: I don’t enjoy Austen that much, and on a certain level, I don’t entirely get her. Certainly, as the bons mots cascaded and warm eruptions of knowing amusement broke out around the London screening room where I watched Love & Friendship, I couldn’t help feeling a little out of the loop, as if I were the only person there uninitiated into a secret language. Partly that was because I was taking notes, and having trouble keeping up: the sheer pace of the exchanges (you could call the film’s mode “Accelerated Austen”) meant that whenever I tried to write down a character’s pithy aperçu, I ended up missing three more—and at the start of the film, several plot points. The language positively ripples past and is hard to follow unless you’re attuned to this kind of dialogue—unless you have, as it were, the Austen ear, and I willingly admit that I don’t.

Like bro, kick back and read this thread: ts big dogs 2014 edition #1: dostoyevsky vs austen

I liked this a lot, so many small perfect touches.

The precise arrangement of the actors in the final shot reminded me of "The Best Years of Our Lives" -- Manwaring's eye coming into the frame above the shoulders of the happy couple, just before the cut.

Or, the little girl muttering "try to be good," and how that suggests an entire society of shoehorned personalities -- Martin's nervous verbosity, Susan relishing her small degree of power. Etc.

*muttering to herself

surely the little girl is muttering to the little boy and what that suggests

A+: Lady Susan's dis of Reginald as "calflike" (reflected by casting too)

Saw this last night and loved it. Tom Bennett's nincompoop is one of the funniest characters of the year.

Later I spent some time reading the source material. This is a very loose adaptation, and almost all of the dialogue is Stillman's, not Austen's.

favorite movie of the year

I thought it was very funny. I haven't read the novella, so I'm not sure how accurate the film is, but it felt quite different from mature Austen. The Austen novels have an evenness which is absent here. It's more going for laughs.

Stillman changed things.

I haven't paid any attention to Beckinsale since Cold Comfort Farm. I feel like I should rectify this but her filmography is awfully full of vampire films

she plays a vampire here

haha

god help me she was so manipulative and conniving yet I fell in love with her

I didn't think Sevigny was that great. She's just a foil to Lady Susan, but she seemed out of place.

This was minor but enjoyable. Loved the dramatis personae bits. Liked Beckinsale, but kinda felt like she was doing Joan Collins the whole time. The actor who played Reginald was some good eye-candy.

loved this. many laughs.

It's good and interesting that Lord Manwaring has very likely orchestrated the whole thing with Lady Susan and yet he doesn't say a word in the film. Very clever. This was a bit of a mess at first, I thought, but it got much better and funnier as it went on. Excellent casting apart from Sevigny who was out of her depth.

It's a stange criticism but the v modern and current looking female make up was a weird choice.

oh i really liked Sevigny in this!

Well

… I really liked Whit Stillman's Jane Austen adaptation Love and Friendship. But it lost something once I clocked that all the front doors had letterboxes: they came along with stamps in the mid 19th century – before then, you had to pay up to get your letters handed over. And…

— Robert Hanks (@RobertHanks) May 8, 2023

Do we have a thread to log these kinds of things?