Review of Love & Friendship (2016) by Jhep — 28 Jun 2016

This film works so well because it’s a kind of cautionary tale about toxic agendas and the people who become “possessed” by them. The film is a kind of horror story in which all the horror is just below the surface where (as Freud and Jung etc. have observed) it can do the most damage.

Kate Beckinsale, the delightful star of the film, and director Whit Stillman succeed so brilliantly in concocting their sardonic vision of 18th century English society that in many ways the result invites comparison with Alexander MacKendrick’s great and scathing 1957 muck-raking classic “Sweet Smell of Success”.

Beckinsale’s inspired, in fact jaw-dropping performance here as a sort of wayward 18th century Soccer Mom run amok and gone dangerously to seed is a challenge to describe in mere words. But begin by thinking Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate” meets Nancy Reagan on a Bad Hair day and you are on the right track…..In fact all of “Love and Friendship” feels VERY CONTEMPORARY and can be seen as a political metaphor for the emergence of today’s neoliberal social and economic environment complete with 1%-Push Coming Austerity-Shove !…..In a world in which the Looking-Out-for- Number-One lifestyle has become the order of the day and successfully implanted into our DNA, Kate Beckinsale’s sociopathic Lady Susan could easily be running for political office on a “Let them eat cake” ticket.

The film has a few momentary missteps and unfortunately these come in first five minutes and can have the effect of setting off considerable alarm bells……Happily this lapse in creative judgment is momentary and film quickly finds its own rhythm and soon moves from strength to strength. (The early lapses consist of a few “goofy” shots in which we are rapidly shown the names and faces of a dozen or so characters in the story. However, these shots which are intended as a sort of parody of early silent movies. are done so rapidly as to be meaningless as information and (more grievous artistically) don’t really work as parody because they’re out of place with the very traditional and very solid narrative that follows.

Whit Stillman is an extremely interesting filmmaker and his films “Metropolitan” and “The Last Days of Disco” are two of the most original American films of recent memory. Even more good news here is that both Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny who star here also starred in “The Last Days of Disco” and each instinctively understands “the Stillman universe”. In fact Beckinsale’s performance here is nothing short of mesmerizing and you can’t wait to see what she will say or do next !……But anyone deciding to see the film should go prepared for a more sombre Jane Austen story than usual (the Nancy Reagan/Mrs. Robinson angle) so maybe think Jane Austen with a hefty dollop of Henry James ……. but let me qualify this statement by pointing out that the note of moral seriousness is always present in Jane Austen’s work (and Whit Stillman’s for that matter) and that Austen has a knack of making her “sunshine” so welcome precisely because her “clouds” are real clouds and portend real downpours !……In fact Whit Stillman‘s “Love and Friendship” works so well because he understands this so thoroughly.