Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman)

[Sycophant]

IMDb

[Sycophant]

One of the best movies I've seen all year. Whit Stillman seems perfectly at home in 18th century England and Kate Beckinsale's performance is a joy to watch. It fuses the relentlessly snazzy ear for great dialogue from Damsels in Distress (which I loved as a great candy-colored cartoon fable) with the more dramatic personal stakes of his earlier work--or his first period, I suppose--and the life-and-death contests of love and livelihood that animates Jane Austen's world. The pacing felt a little too rushed, perhaps, at the end, but that is likely due, in part, to me wanting to stay in this world and in the company of Lady Susan (or Tom Bennett's Martin, who very nearly steals the thing out from under her) for a while longer.

The cinematography in this one is great, too. These stately old homes of the British upper class look very well-inhabited with the dim indoor lighting that leaves the characters appropriately in shadow for much of it. It's a playful adaptation in content and form (lol, let's not get too bogged down in that distinction), and crafts from a minor, early Austen work (one that is, indeed, according to Stillman, quite flawed--he even re-wrote it as a novel) one of the finest Austen films I've seen.