Mix and Mingle Among The
Mayfair Swells-Jane Austen’s “Love and Friendship” (2016)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Senior Film Critic
Sandy Salmon
Love And Friendship,
starring Kate Beckindale, Xavier Samuel, based on the novella Lady Susan by Jane Austen, 2016
Damn my old friend and
former colleague at American Film Gazette
Sam Lowell whom I replaced as film critic at this site although occasionally
writes some “think” pieces now that he is no longer under any deadline. His
damnation centers on the tendency that he had when he got interested in a type
of film or an author/writer and do a “run” based on that interest (still does
so when writing about film noir which
he been doing a slow moving “run” B-grade noirs
on recently). Over the many years I have known him I also seemed to have picked
up the habit. The habit in the present case being taking a “run” at various
films based on Jane Austen’s novels and other works after having viewed the
film The Jane Austen Book Club. Well
we are going down that trail once again with the film adaptation of her early
work Lady Susan using the title of
another Austen work Love and Friendship.
The scheme in Book Club was to take a modern book club
membership and develop the plot of the film around the similarity of
relationships among them to those in Austen’s six major novels. No question
that one Jane Austen was an astute observer of the social mores and ethos of
the later 18th century, early 19th century English country
gentry, a strata of society which if it didn’t have the prestige of the upper
nobility nevertheless owned the vast tracts of land and controlled the doings
of the Parliament in those days that made the kingdom work. Here dear Jane
looks at the mating rituals of that country gentry whose members were always in
the end driven by the need to avoid dropping down the social ladder. That is
most definitely the concern of the lead character Lady Susan, played by Kate
Beckindale, whose aim is just that desire to avoid dropping down in her
circumstances-and because inheritance is everything just look at the obtuse Common
Law provisions that of her daughter.
Let the games begin.
Bring a scorecard. Lady Susan is on the rebound having been tossed out of one
manor for going toe to toe with the lord of said manor. So off she goes to the
country estate of her brother-in law and wife with her lady companion to see
what she can dig up to restore her diminished sources. Before long she has that
brother-in-law’s wife’s brother, Reginald played by Xavier Samuel, eating out
of her hand despite himself (despite knowing that she is in modern language a
“tramp”). But his/their father said no way, forget it. Still that brother is
not so easy to convince of milady’s sullen sooty character and things look like
he will be snagged.
Then all hell breaks
loose Lady Susan as it turned out was still going toe to toe with that randy
lord and his wife found out about it through a letter delivered by Reginald.
The long and short of it is that Lady Susan was forced to call off her
relationship with promising Reginald although that is not the last we will see
of him. Enter Lady Susan’s daughter Frederica along with a goof companion Sir
James Martin. Once Reginald sees Frederica they quickly become an item and goof
Sir James is left empty-handed. Well not quite since on the rebound and
fiercely committed to her own cozy future she picks up Sir James. All’s well
that ends well. With this scenario it is a wonder that Britain was able to rule
the world for as long as it did. Hey, what do you think maybe it was because of
it.
No comments:
Post a Comment