While no character in Love & Friendship gears up for a bit of “ultraviolence,” the musical cues invite one to understand Stillman’s take on Austen’s world as one predicated on societally sanctioned cruelty. The Henry Purcell march “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary,” which is the piece that Stanley Kubrick used for the first shot of A Clockwork Orange, scores the opening sequence. These more obvious parallels seem to guise rather obtuse references to other canonical film adaptations. Then there’s the matter of actresses Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny, who appear in Love & Friendship as a pair of society-conscious femmes, a relationship not unlike the frenemy status of their characters from The Last Days of Disco. However, a lot of the dialogue has been taken directly from the Jane Austen novel, Lady Susan, from which the film is adapted. Characters speak in verbose ways, which is concurrent with previous Stillman characters.

But his latest, Love & Friendship, outwardly displays only nominal links with his past work. Stillman’s first three films ( Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco) overlap in rather direct ways, with characters from the first and second films partying inside the primary discotheque of the third. As much homage to its muse's perennial influence as testament to its author's brilliance, Love & Friendship is a sharp comedy of manners, and a fiendishly funny treat for Austen and Stillman fans alike.For Whit Stillman, intertextual play within his films and between others crops up with enough frequency to suspect that every directorial gesture is an encoded allusion just waiting to be uncovered. With a pitch-perfect Austenian sensibility and wry social commentary, filmmaker and writer Whit Stillman cleverly reimagines and completes one of our greatest writers' unfinished works.

Here she intends to take refuge-in no less than luxury, of course-from the colorful rumors trailing her, while finding another avenue to 'I do.' Before the scandalizing gossip can run its course, though, romantic triangles ensue. Unannounced, she arrives at her brother-in-law's country estate. Impossibly beautiful, disarmingly witty, and completely self-absorbed: Meet Lady Susan Vernon, both the heart and the thorn of “Love' '& Friendship.' Recently widowed, with a daughter who's coming of age as quickly as their funds are dwindling, Lady Susan makes it her mission to find them wealthy husbands-and fast.īut when her attempts to secure their futures result only in the wrath of a prominent conquest's wife and the title of 'most accomplished coquette in England,' Lady Susan must rethink her strategy. Jane Austen's funniest novel is also her least known-until now.

Love and friendship jane austen