Following the latest Austen adaptation Emma, starring Bill Nighy and Anya Taylor-Joy, we’re rewatching Whit Stillman’s exquisite comedy of matchmaking and heart-breaking Love & Friendship, based on the Jane Austen novella Lady Susan.
The deliciously scheming and manipulative Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale) has come to Churchill, the estate of her in-laws, to wait out the colourful rumours about her dalliances circulating through polite society. Whilst ensconced there, she decides to secure a husband for herself and for her eligible but reluctant school-girl daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark). The waters are troubled by the arrival at Churchill of the handsome, eligible Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel) and silly but cheerful - and very rich - Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett). Chloe Sevigny, who starred with Beckinsale in Whit Stillman’s ‘The Last Days of Disco’ (1998) plays Lady Susan’s friend and confidante Alicia Johnson, with Stephen Fry as her husband, the “very respectable” Mr. Johnson.
★★★★★ “Lives up to every possible expectation” - Tim Robey, The Telegraph
★★★★★ “An unexpected delight, a very dry and tremendously witty adaptation” - Geoffrey Macnab, The Independent
★★★★★ “Whit Stillman was born to direct a Jane Austen movie” - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
