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'Love & Friendship': A Comedy of Manners & Manors
By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires Film Critic
01:50PM / Thursday, June 02, 2016
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Kate Beckinsale is Lady Susan Vernon, a widow playing parlor games of vanity and brinksmanship while on the lookout for love — or more preferably a rich husband — in this adaptation of Jane Austen's 'Lady Susan.'

I think it was because I was a sleepy little kid in grammar school who didn't appreciate the advantage of a good education that I didn't fully enjoy writer-director Whit Stillman's "Love & Friendship." I also blame that era, wherein I spent most of my classroom time drawing sketches of cars and baseball stadiums, for not really learning the times table past 8. Only the pocket calculator has saved me from financial ruin.

Yep, I hold that those years of foggy reverie, while doubtless a proving ground for creativity and idealistic wandering, denied me a certain cerebral software necessary to the conventional learning process. Hence, even though Stillman's adaptation of Jane Austen's "Lady Susan" opens matters with a classically vintage introduction to the principal personae, glibly informing of demeanor, social status and motivation, I was immediately confused.

"Who, what? Too fast ... can't remember all this. Gee, if only I had paid attention in grammar school."

Of course, having eventually righted my course and happily managing to avoid total doltishness, it's at about the film's three-quarter mark that I finally absorb the who's who and become hip to the skinny. Truth be told, this comedy of both manners and manors is rather droll in the way that British convention so often is, especially when doled out by an American of such obvious, Anglophile persuasion.

Centered around the stratagems and cunning wiles of Kate Beckinsale's Lady Susan Vernon, it is a veritable primer on societal manipulation.

Circa 1790s, Lady Susan, a widow whose social wanderlust has earned her what they called a rep in my high school, bounces about from one relative's manor to the next in search of where she might find a rich suitor for her daughter, Frederica (Morfydd Clark), and maybe herself, too.

The theory is that a rolling stone might not gather any negative gossip ... or at least not long enough for it to mess up her plan. Beckinsale is superb. Confused though we may be as the numerous in-laws and courters enter stage left and right, we've little doubt about her ambitions.

Funny thing is, neither is anyone else fooled who filters in and out of the opulent drawing rooms of these very well landed gentry. Oh, sure, they play oblivious, as if to give one another the benefit of the doubt ... the civil thing to do, old man. But it's all really a game of vanity and brinksmanship ... something to occupy the minds of people who have neither the woes of bills nor diversions like movies, computers or "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" to fill their idle time.

Oh sure, our tarnished heroine, who today might make a great real estate salesperson or divorce lawyer, if she deigned to work, is on the hunt for what will keep her in the fashion to which she is accustomed. But we know she's not going to starve. I mean, how would it look? There is a great safety net among persons who have Lady or Sir before their name, especially in times when folks die quite young. To be sure, there's always a market for potential stepmoms and dads.

It's well done and intellectually provocative. But Stillman's adroit, running commentary on the mores and folkways of yesteryear's version of the Top 1 percent is much smarter than just that.

The auteur adds a quiet but telling subtext in the personages of the numerous servants milling about both in and out the mansions, making sure all the lords and ladies aren't distracted from their dalliances. The sleepy little kid still lurking in me, albeit unable to figure out the tip at the diner, contemplates all those pre-enfranchised citizens and asks two things: 1. What about them: how about their lives? 2. What does their veritable invisibility say about the people they serve?

Just like the young, balding, hedge fund dude with the Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses who cuts you off in his BMW, they're thinking about nothing but themselves. But this is especially true of Lady Susan, who makes a Darwinian statement with every move. Save for her daughter and her American confidante, Alicia (Chloë Sevigny), everyone is either an impediment or a tool, a means to her very cozy survival. We are entertainingly aghast at what Prime Minister Disraeli might have called her sheer chutzpah. Caught in a deceit, she tells Alicia, "Facts are so horrid."

Austen's cultural observations admiringly interpreted through Stillman's cleverly winking eye are all so properly intelligent, cynical and upper-crusty. Hence, if you're the sort who paid attention in grammar school, "Love & Friendship's" hifalutin wit shouldn't be lost on you. As for viewers like myself, alas deficient in that educational attribute, I'm confident full appreciation will come if I repeat the course.

"Love & Friendship," rated PG, is a Roadside Attractions release directed by Whit Stillman and stars Kate Beckinsale, Xavier Samuel and Chloë Sevigny. Running time: 92 minutes

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