Stillman’s film inventively captures the source-novel’s epistolatory style: at one point DeCourcy’s father reads out a letter, tediously including all the punctuation. At first he disapproves of her, but is eventually charmed by her false modesty. The most prominent of her prey is Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel). Austen’s novella, known as Lady Susan, centres on the haughty but impoverished widow’s attempt to marry off her reluctant daughter Frederica, while she spins a web of suitors for herself. So it seemed inevitable that Stillman would eventually turn to the source of his inspiration. The characters in his later films-set at the height of disco fever, in Barcelona at the end of the Cold War and an all-female college-speak in the refined cadences of 18th-century moralists, debating manners and virtue with often biting wit. In his Oscar-nominated film Metropolitan (1989), a preppy comedy of manners, the budding young lovers argue over Lionel Trilling’s famous essay on Mansfield Park. But at the story’s heart is not shy young Frederica (Morfydd Clark) searching for a husband, but the bolder sallies of her widowed mother, Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale)-“the most accomplished flirt in all England.” ![]() Whit Stillman’s new film Love and Friendship-adapted from an early Jane Austen novella-has all the ingredients of a typical Regency costume drama. Her prize? Romance and a suitable spouse. A young lady entering high society must navigate scheming mothers, interfering aunts and proud men.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |