Whit Stillman’s latest film Love & Friendship is an adaptation of an unpublished Jane Austen novel that mocks and subverts the patriarchy, and delightfully explores cunning women, bumbling men and gender politics.

Upon seeing Kate Beckinsale’s Lady Susan appear out of nowhere and woo the much younger Reginald deCourcy, his mother incredulously asks, “Does that woman always get her way?” to which her daughter replies, “She has an uncanny understanding of men’s natures.”

It should be pointed out that the ‘men’s nature’ in this film hardly gives Hamlet a run for his money. If assembled in a line, the film’s male characters would look like an idiot’s March of Progress. Take Sir James Martin, the (un)intended of Lady Susan’s daughter. The man is dimmer than a recently turned on energy-saving light bulb. He is the sort of man who is delighted by peas and who is delightfully surprised when, upon arriving at deCourcy’s house called Churchill, to find neither ‘church’ nor ‘hill’. It speaks volumes that the one man in the film who doesn’t confirm his idiocy is one who doesn’t say anything at all.

But the film’s focus is not on men. In fact, the men are very obviously the objects. The real players are the women. Love & Friendship bears the hallmarks of a classic Jane Austen novel: highly intelligent women who, frustrated at the patriarchal society that sees them governed by male buffoons, resort to shaping their lives through flattery and giving the men gentle nudges in the right direction.

It is not only Lady Susan that has a canny understanding of men’s natures – all the women do, but they all choose to use this power differently. Lady Susan’s cynicism and explicit resentment of men is not shared at all by her kind-hearted daughter or even by the other female characters. The young Lady Vernon’s marriage is founded upon the fact that it is she and not he who is in control, but it is a loving relationship nonetheless. This contrasts with Alicia’s (Chloe Sevigny) marriage, which is completely loveless and has the husband hold all the cards.

However, Lady Susan stands apart. She is recently widowed, and rumours of her affairs are spreading fast. This isolated yet unbreakable character is a role Kate Beckinsale simply revels in. It is arguably her best. Her Lady Susan is a cold, calculating Machiavelli who will stop at nothing to get a rich husband, high social status and maintain her affair with a married man. But you wouldn’t be able to tell she has such self-serving instincts because Beckinsale not only plays Lady Susan as someone who convinces everybody of her kind nature, but as someone who has already convinced herself. She doesn’t pay her servant any money not because she hasn’t any, but because they are friends and the “paying of wages would be offensive to us both.” Every uncomfortable position has a way out. The wife of the man she had an affair with is to blame for the adultery, as she shouldn’t have married such a “charming man.”

She speaks in such an incessantly gushing way that she could do a U-turn in one sentence and you would end up agreeing with her position even more vehemently.

Whilst Beckinsale is the film’s standout, the rest of the cast shouldn’t be forgotten. Tom Bennett nearly steals the show as Sir James Martin – the scene where he explains his confusion at the name Churchill had the whole cinema in tears of laughter. Sevigny and Emma Greenwell were excellent as Lady Susan’s friend and suspicious enemy respectively.

Love & Friendship is a resounding success not only because of a stellar cast and a standout performance from Beckinsale, but also because it perfectly manages to capture the spirit of Jane Austen. Beneath the semblance of a light-hearted comedy, there is steeliness and a subversive nature that isn’t afraid to challenge what is widely accepted. 4/5

Check out the rest of the latest cinema releases in our new movie reviews section including Greta Gerwig’s latest Maggie’s Plan.

Author: Ben Rabinovich Date: 2016-05-24 Title: Love and Friendship Rating: 4