Love & Friendship: Whit Stillman Punches Up Jane Austen

When tackling Jane Austen’s unfinished early novel Lady Susan, Whit Stillman stripped away the epistolary structure, but the characters’ desire to dish remains as strong as ever. In ostensibly polite London society, nobody is a bigger cause and purveyor of gossip than Lady Susan Vernon. Her scandals will be inhaled and savored in Stillman’s Love & Friendship (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Lady Susan and her long-suffering daughter Frederica have just been evicted by their hosts, Lord and Lady Manwaring for reasons we can quickly deduce. It is fair to say Lord Manwaring is sorry to see her go, but go she must. The Vernons temporarily find shelter with Lady Susan’s closest friend Alicia Johnson, a former American Loyalist. Of course, her fuddy-duddy husband does not approve of such a wicked woman, so she arranges a long term residency for them in Churchill, the estate of her good natured brother-in-law, Charles Vernon and his rightfully wary wife Catherine (of the prominent DeCourcy family).

True to form, Lady Susan immediately vindicates her suspicions by bedazzling her highly eligible younger brother Reginald. Although he fancies himself a worldly fellow, he is no match for Vernon’s charms. Simultaneously, Lady Susan doggedly pursues a match for Frederica with the Vernon-DeCourcys’ neighbor, the ridiculously wealthy and downright ridiculous Sir James Martin. Such a prospect alarms Frederica’s hosts, igniting a battle of wits and manners.

Frankly, you might want to jot down some notes to keep the large cast of characters straight, but it hardly matters. Stillman’s dialogue is so deliciously witty and cutting, it is always a pleasure to hear and it usually reveals Lady Susan’s attitudes towards her respective conversation partners in spades. Late Eighteenth Century England might have been a man’s world, but they are completely out-classed by the infinitely cannier women, with the constantly scheming Lady Susan standing in a class by itself.

This is indeed Lady Susan’s story and what a role it is. Fortunately, Kate Beckinsale plays it to the hilt, luxuriating in every caustic barb and seductive glance. Finally, she lives up to the promise of her 1990s work, in such films as Much Ado About Nothing, Cold Comfort Farm, and Stillman Last Days of Disco. Where has she been for the last eighteen years, besides Stonehearst Asylum, Pearl Harbor, and the Underworld franchise? It is good to have her back, commanding the screen and all the silly men around her as such a flamboyant but razor sharp character.

Most everyone wilts next to Beckinsale’s Lady Susan, but not Tom Bennett, who remains defiantly chipper as the utterly clueless Sir James. He raises upper class buffoonery to a high art form. Wisely, Chloë Sevigny opts for the understated approach as Johnson, the American Tory, quietly tossing in sly gibes to complement Beckinsale’s Bette Davis-like turn.

Arguably, if ever there was a modern American Tory, it would be Whit Stillman. Love & Friendship might be his first period piece (a quite a lovely production it is), but the droll humor and keen eye for social dynamics can be traced throughout his work. Frankly, audiences with certain expectations for literary adaptations might not realize how much fun this film is, even though no early Nineteenth Century novelist is more commercial today than Jane Austen. It is one of the funniest, classiest, most salacious films of the year. Very highly recommended, Love & Friendship opens this Friday (5/13) in New York, at the Paris Theater uptown and the Angelika Film Center downtown.

Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress

Prepare to revisit college life. However, this time you will see it from the perspective of those who always looked on you with prim disdain (and deservedly so, perhaps). A small clique of undergraduate women try to act as the arbiters of campus propriety, but they are frequently disregarded in Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Violet Wister considers herself the queen bee of Seven Oaks University and her friends Heather and Rose agree with her. Transfer student Lily is quite taken with their fashion sense and the confidence they project. However, some of their activities take some getting used to. Though appalled by the low level of male hygiene on campus, they frequently socialize with, and even date, members of the rowdiest fraternity house. They also oversee a rather dubious suicide prevention line and blow off steam by tap-dancing.

In fact, Distress is almost, but not quite, a legitimate movie musical. Indeed, music and choreography plays an important role in the story, especially for Wister, who aspires to launch a dance craze. As in Last Days of Disco, Stillman again lionizes the shared experience of social dance. (However, Wister’s assertion that the Charleston was invented by a man named Charleston may rub stride piano fans the wrong way, denying the share of credit due to James P. Johnson.)

Stillman remains a keen observer of social dynamics, astutely capturing the vibe of cloistered life in a small eastern liberal art college. Yet, Distress’s comedy is broader and more scattershot than his previous films (all three of them). That is not necessarily a bad thing though, since it is often rather funny. Unfortunately, “It” girl Wister’s charm is somewhat obscure. Frankly, Greta Gerwig seems awkwardly miscast here. She appears to struggle a bit with the rat-a-tat-tat dialogue, but at least she is not a bad hoofer.

In contrast, Megalyn Echikunwoke consistently gives the film a spark of energy as the hard to impress Rose. Her faux-British accent is a particularly clever touch. Analeigh Tipton is also realistically down-to-earth, yet still somewhat immature as the newly initiated Lily.

Though Distress conspicuously steers clear of campus political correctness controversies, Stillman takes an unambiguously jaundiced view of the reformist inclination, skewering Wister’s good intentions and ill-conceived follow-through. Indeed, there are a lot of witty and inspired things going on around her. A welcome return for the erudite Stillman, Distress suffers somewhat from a weak lead, but it still has enough to recommend it for the filmmaker’s fans and anyone who enjoys a verbally nimble film. It opens this Friday (4/6) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.