Thank heaven for Whit Stillman and his reworking of Austen's novella,
Lady Susan... Stillman seamlessly interweaves the original text and his own words. There were moments when I was unsure which bits were Austen's and which were Stillman's...
If, like me, you like your Austen subversive, cruel, funny and outrageous, then you will love Stillman's Love & Friendship. * The Times *
Stillman has
immense fun playing the earnest, gullible narrator's misconceptions against the machinations of an arch-manipulator in this
witty, sly spoof * Mail on Sunday *
Anyone expecting a straightforward novelisation of the film is actually going to find something far cleverer in their hands * Bookanista *
Lady Susan is finally getting some
long overdue respect... The book and film both showcase
some of the sharpest lines from Austen's overlooked work. * New York Times *
Funny.... Lady Susan remains
deliciously wicked * Vogue *
Stillman worships Austen and [the book and film] show a deep familiarity with her life, work, and times * Slate *
Both movie and book are
much funnier than they sound in a brief description * Salon *
Stillman has
a fine eye for social niceties * Library Journal, Editor's Pick *
A merry comedy of pride, prejudice, and duplicity... Silly, sly, eccentric characters and brisk chatter make for a
diverting romp. * Kirkus *
Stillman (The Last Days of Disco)
cleverly reimagines a little-known Jane Austen character... Lady Susan's nephew, Martin Rufus Martin-Colonna de Cesari-Rocca, brings both
quirky and hilarious flavor to Stillman's story. * Publishers Weekly *
For those who have read Austen's original novella, you will remember that Lady Susan Vernon is described by Reginald De Courcy as "the most accomplished coquette in England." and by others as devious, wicked and "with a happy command of language, which is too often used, I believe, to make black appear white."
To vindicate her scurrilous behavior is an intriguing premise indeed! * Austen Prose - A Jane Austen Blog *
PRAISE FOR LOVE & FRIENDSHIP - THE FILM
A racy delight... What audacity, what elegance! Here is a hilariously self-aware period comedy polished to a brilliant sheen
* Guardian ***** *
Shows just how funny Jane Austen can be... It's
flat-out hilarious -
find me a funnier screen stab at Austen, and I'm tempted to offer your money back personally * Telegraph ***** *
A
very dry and
tremendously witty adaptation * Independent ***** *
Kate Beckinsale is wonderfully immoral in this
pitch-perfect adaptation that
may just be the best Jane Austen film ever made... It's pitch-perfect, beautifully poised,
faithfully honouring the original while brilliantly dramatising and completing it * London Evening Standard ***** *
Wonderful * Financial Times **** *
In the past quarter-century or so,
there have been too many Jane Austen movies and too few Whit Stillman movies... I'm happy to report, in any case, that the release of
Love & Friendshipmitigates both the shortage and the surfeit. It's the Whit Stillman movie that some of us have been waiting a long time for, and also a Jane Austen movie that
goes some way toward correcting the record of dull and dutiful cinematic Janeism * New York Times Critic's Pick *
Kate Beckinsale is a devious delight... Beckinsale is
a hoot to watch as a character with no redeemable qualities, except for her cunning ability to get what she wants. You can't help but love Lady Susan because of the evident joy she takes in being so duplicitous. Her energy is infectious. Despite its period trappings,
Stillman's film never feels stilted, largely thanks to his bracingly modern heroine who takes no prisoners, and makes no apologies for her conniving behavior. * Guardian *
Jane Austen has never been funnier... Gliding through its compact 92 minutes with alert photography and
not a single scene wasted, it's also
Stillman on the form of his life...Kate Beckinsale's best role in 20 years...
a deliciously controlled and self-aware performance, playing the Austen title character as a born manipulator so devious she can spin the rest of the ensemble around her little finger... The performances, even from some of the more surprising cast members, are uniformly sharp... Perhaps only by reading the book after you've seen this is the skill of Stillman's treatment to be fully grasped - it's
one of the deftest feats of literary interpolation in ages * Daily Telegraph *
A
fresh,
beguiling movie, and the
wittiest Austen adaptation to grace the screen * The Times *
Whit Stillman, whose incisive comedies of bourgeois mores make him
the modern cinema's Jane Austen, adapts one of her early novels in
Love & Friendship...
fast,
precise, and
giddily dialectical costume romp... By way of his cast's mercurial verbal jousting and gestural elegance, Stillman captures the exquisite eroticism of high-society manners. * New Yorker *
Whit Stillman may have fashioned the finest Jane Austen movie this year: the
delightfully droll Love & Friendship, based on Austen's novella
Lady Susan...
Stillman so effortlessly, elegantly bridges the gap between his conniving aristocrats and Austen's that it's difficult to say where one's sensibility ends and the other's begins. It's a misfortune that Stillman and Austen were born in different centuries, but
Love & Friendship is a perfect match of two sly observers, each with the capacity to be at once cruelly satirical to, and fond, of, their creations.
Beckinsale is superb...
Love & Friendship is
a most particular pleasure * New York Post *
Whit Stillman returns - and
on absolute peak form - with this
drastically delightful Jane Austen adaptation...
Superlative...
Kate Beckinsale astonishes * Little White Lies *
The central character is Lady Susan Vernon Martin, a widow of diminishing means
played with high duplicitous verve by Kate Beckinsale * BBC Culture *
A
supremely elegant and
delicately filigreed adaptation of Jane Austen's epistolary novella
Lady Susan...
Whit Stillman proves an unsurprisingly intuitive fit for Austen, but he also knows just how to give her pointed social satire an extra stab of wink-wink postmodern drollery without breaking the spell...
Beckinsale magnetizes the screen * Variety *
Snappy...
Cheeky in its approach as well as
spirited and good-natured, this
enterprising adaptation of the author's relatively unfamiliar early novella Lady Susan remains buoyant through most of its short running time * Hollywood Reporter *
the
perfect marriage between Stillman's absurdist wit and Austen's period manners, further propped by
Beckinsale's vibrant, rhythmic hysterical performance * Deadline *
