To Stillman’s credit his original lines are difficult to distinguish from Austen’s. Mr Johnson, the husband of her friend Alicia (Chloë Sevigny), is sadly “too old to be governable, too young to die.” After he forbids the two women from meeting, Lady Susan utters a double-edged prayer: “May Mr Johnson’s next gouty attack end favourably!”

Many of the best lines are paraphrased from Austen: “Facts are such horrid things!” Lady Susan exclaims, when her schemes hit a snag. Stillman’s film inventively captures the source-novel’s epistolatory style: at one point DeCourcy’s father reads out a letter, tediously including all the punctuation. At first he disapproves of her, but is eventually charmed by her false modesty. The most prominent of her prey is Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel). Austen’s novella, known as Lady Susan, centres on the haughty but impoverished widow’s attempt to marry off her reluctant daughter Frederica, while she spins a web of suitors for herself. So it seemed inevitable that Stillman would eventually turn to the source of his inspiration.

The characters in his later films-set at the height of disco fever, in Barcelona at the end of the Cold War and an all-female college-speak in the refined cadences of 18th-century moralists, debating manners and virtue with often biting wit. In his Oscar-nominated film Metropolitan (1989), a preppy comedy of manners, the budding young lovers argue over Lionel Trilling’s famous essay on Mansfield Park. But at the story’s heart is not shy young Frederica (Morfydd Clark) searching for a husband, but the bolder sallies of her widowed mother, Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale)-“the most accomplished flirt in all England.” Whit Stillman’s new film Love and Friendship-adapted from an early Jane Austen novella-has all the ingredients of a typical Regency costume drama. Her prize? Romance and a suitable spouse. In “Love & Friendship,” a circuitous tale about the impoverished widow Lady Susan’s campaign to find husbands for herself and her daughter, much attention is paid to women’s dependence in the 18th and early 19th centuries on successful marriages.Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan in Whit Stillman's 'Love and Friendship' Read more: Jane Austen at the discoĪ young lady entering high society must navigate scheming mothers, interfering aunts and proud men. With Austen’s books, you don’t want to change what it is.” With some authors, you want to change a lot of what it was originally, to bring it to the screen. But I think there must be some sort of deep story genius that Austen delivers. I love all of her texts, the dialogue, the perspective she has. “There’s a deep character story in her books, which makes her work very good for adaptation to film.

Whit stillman jane austen