Jane Austen's Lady Susan - Movie Adaptation Love and Friendship

Published posthumously, Lady Susan is a short epistolary novella written by Jane Austen.  Without giving too much away, the plot involves a rather calculating Lady Susan, a widow.  Lady Susan is clever and charming.  She's so clever and charming that she manages to walk through her life and create eddies of chaos around her as she goes.  She's a widow of incredible beauty and intelligence and is on a mission to secure her future by finding a husband for herself and her reluctant daughter Frederica.  

Love and Friendship is a 2016 film adaptation of Lady Susan.  

Love and Friendship 2016 - Kate Beckinsale 

Simply put this movie is amazing.  Lady Susan played by the incomparable Kate Beckinsale who sweeps us away in this incredible role.  I cackled out loud at least three separate times.  The audacity, the pluck, the charm!  Lady Susan is not your typical Jane Austen heroine.  She doesn't sit around politely doing all the right things and waiting for an unjust world to miraculously yield a happy ending to her.  Lady Susan goes out into the world with determination, and with nothing but cunning, wit, and charm, demands the world yield to her.  It is a delightful thing to watch her charm and scheme her way into and out of situations.  

Every time you see her unique reasoning and wording popping out of someone else's mouth you know that she has gotten under their skin and won them over to her cause.  It's simply delightful.  I rather enjoyed watching Lady Susan wrap men around her fingers and get her way.  

Slightly untraditionally for a Jane Austen novel, Lady Susan is not punished for her bad behavior and impropriety.  Yet, don't despair, the other characters still get happy endings as one has come to expect from Jane Austen novels.   

The cinematography was gorgeous.  The clothes and locations are all perfection.  Kate Beckinsale is perfection in this role.  Even knowing all her mischievous schemes, we still want her to succeed, and this is largely due to the charm that Kate Beckinsale exudes in this role.  She knows how to be clever, commanding, endearing, and difficult in just the right measures.

I adore the letter reading scene with Sir Reginald DeCourcy and Lady DeCourcy.  The fact that he offers to read her the letter and doesn't seem to know that she wants to know more than the first sentence.  Then must be told not to read the punctuation.  It's so cute and random.  I love it.

This is certainly not my all-time favorite Jane Austen story, but it's so beautifully done that it ranks rather high on my list of all movie adaptations.  The only thing I wish they'd really done differently was the beginning.  I didn't love meeting the characters with title cards.  I know they were trying to establish complex relationships quickly without getting mired in too much back story.  However, I found I had to keep pausing the movie and rewinding to fully process the title cards.  I wish they'd let Kate Beckinsale simply narrate the title cards rather than have you do so much quick reading to establish the characters all at once in the beginning.  

The love interests are all exactly what one would wish them to be.  There is the brooding and still "divinely attractive man", Lord Manwaring.  There is the charming and loveable Reginald DeCourcy who we watch fall for Lady Susan and then like him the better for being appalled by her behavior, even if he is hurt.  Sir James Martin is such a dolt that you can hardly believe he exists.  But he's so amiable and funny that you can't even hate him for it.  And it leads to some delightful dialogue such as "He has offered you the one thing of value he has to give — his income."  It is accurate, cutting, rude and without mean intent.  It's simply a statement of bald facts in a way we aren't used to seeing from characters in Austen novels.  It made me cackle, rather uproariously, of course. 

Oh, and let's not forget that Stephen Fry is the husband of Lady Susan's particular friend, Alicia, an American in exile for supporting the British.  Everything Stephen Fry does is incredible and he is no less brilliant in this role, even if it is a small part of the story.  

I rather like that when we first meet Charles Vernon we get the idea that he's too simple to understand how dangerous Lady Susan is.  But as the movie goes on I think it's really him that has the clearest picture of her and is unswayed, he knows she's no good, but also still admires the way she has dealt with her misfortunes.  He may be the only one with an unbiased opinion of her.  It's marvelous.

All in all, Lady Susan is delightfully wicked, and I loved it!  If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it.  I'll say no more at present.  I'll simply leave you with a handful of hilarious quotes and a collection of gorgeous stills from the movie itself.

"If she was going to be jealous she should not have married such a charming man!"

"In one's plight is one's opportunity"

"I wanted her to be delighted with me.  But I didn't succeed.  It's true I've always detested her and that before her marriage, I went to great lengths to prevent it.  Yet it shows an illiberal spirit to resent for long a plan that didn't succeed."

"There's a certain pleasure in making a person predetermined to dislike instead acknowledge one's superiority."

"The fallacy of youth. Isn't it rather clear that we, women of decision, hold the trumps?"

"Americans really have shown themselves to be a nation of ingrates.  Only by having children can one begin to understand such a dynamic."

"Our present comfortable state is of the most precarious sort.  We don't live.  We visit.  We're entirely at the mercy of our friends and relations.  As we discovered so painfully at Langford.  Here you seem to have won your aunt's affections.  I think I served you well there, for I believe she'd do anything to spite me.  But such a dynamic cannot continue forever."

"He has offered you the one thing he has of value to give - his income."

"Facts are horrid things."

"What a mistake you made marrying Mr. Johnson.  Too old to be governable.  Too young to die."

More Jane Austen

If you need even more Jane Austen Discussion in your life, here are some more posts and discussions of movie adaptations of Jane Austen.  

I have a whole page dedicated to Jane Austen where you can find my rankings of different movie adaptations and essays etc.

All Things Jane Austen

Detailed Discussions of all the Austen Movie Adaptations

To see my ranking of Every Jane Austen Movie Adaptation, go here.

For my discussion/ranking of all the Pride and Prejudice adaptations, you can go here.
For my discussion/ranking of all the Persuasion Adaptations, you can go here.
For my discussion/ranking of all the Emma Adaptations, you can go here.
For my discussion/ranking of all the Sense and Sensibility Adaptations, you can go here.
For my discussion/ranking of all the Mansfield Park Adaptations, you can go here.
For my discussion/ranking of all the Northanger Abbey Adaptations, you can go here.

For my discussion/ranking of all the "Not-Quite-Austen's" you can go here.