In Whit Stillman’s new film Love and Friendship, Kate Beckinsale steps away from the vampire-fighting Underworld role that made her famous and offers something really different: an adaptation of a Jane Austen story, in which she plays a widowed aristocrat hanging on to her standing in society despite dwindling assets. In honor of the film’s throwback to a very different kind of society, we asked Beckinsale to read from a book of 18th century dating etiquette, which includes everything from the specific details of the “courting candle” to the dangers of women who reveal too much ankle.

For more on the film, take a look at the exclusive clip below, in which Beckinsale is joined by co-star Chloë Sevigny to fret over the most 18th-century of social disasters: a letter seen by the wrong eyes. As we wrote in our review of the film from the Sundance Film Festival in January, Love and Friendship is in some ways a classic comedy of manners for Stillman, the director behind The Last Days of Disco and Metropolitan, the latter of which was also a film in which “a bunch of rich people yapped and sighed and meddled in each others affairs of the heart.” Love and Friendship also features what we’ve described as “the most entertaining performance in Kate Beckinsale's career.” Get a glimpse of that performance in the clip below, and for more see Love and Friendship in theaters beginning May 13.