LOVE & FRIENDSHIP, MOVIE BASED ON STORY BY JANE AUSTEN

Love and Friendship is a juvenile story by Jane Austen, dated 1790. From the age of eleven until she was eighteen, Jane Austen wrote her tales in three notebooks. The notebooks still exist – one in the Bodleian Library; the other two in the British Museum. They include among others Love and Freindship, written when Jane was fourteen, and The History of England, when she was fifteen.

The movie: Love & Friendship is an adaptation of young Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan, believed to have been written in the mid 1790s but revised up to a fair copy prepared in 1805 and finally published by her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, in 1871.

Set in the 1790s, earlier than most Austen tales, LOVE & FRIENDSHIP concerns beautiful young widow Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) who has come to Churchill, the estate of her in-laws, to wait out colourful rumours about her dalliances circulating through polite society.

Whilst ensconced there, she decides to secure a husband for herself and for her daughter, Frederica, played by Morfydd Clark.

Chloë Sevigny, who starred with Beckinsale in Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco (1998), plays Lady Susan’s friend and confidante Alicia Johnson, with Stephen Fry as her husband, the “very Respectable” Mr. Johnson.

The waters are troubled by the arrival at Churchill of the handsome, eligible Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel) and silly but cheerful — and very rich — Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett).

Lady Susan’s designs are vehemently opposed by the http://loveandfriendshipmovie.com/ DeCourcy clan: Reginald’s sister, Catherine DeCourcy Vernon (Emma Greenwell); his mother, Lady DeCourcy (Jemma Redgrave) and father, Sir Reginald DeCourcy (James Fleet). But Susan’s brother-in-law, magnanimous Charles Vernon (Justin Edwards), prefers to see her, and everyone, with a benevolent regard.

After a series of dramatic turns at Churchill, Lady Susan finally risks destruction when her jealous rival, Lady Lucy Manwaring (Jenn Murray), arrives in London to make a shocking revelation, leading to the denouement of denouements.

Director: Whit Stillman
Writers: Jane Austen (based on her novella “Lady Susan”), Whit Stillman
Kate Beckinsale – Lady Susan Vernon
Chloë Sevigny – Alicia Johnson
Xavier Samuel – Reginald DeCourcy
Emma Greenwell – Catherine Vernon
Tom Bennett – Sir James Martin
Stephen Fry – Mr. Johnson

“One of the best films of the year.”
– Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

“A devious delight! The material is a perfect fit for Whit Stillman.”
– Nigel M. Smith, The Guardian

“Flat-out-hilarious. Jane Austen has never been funnier.”
– Tim Robey, The Telegraph

# more info on website Love & Friendship

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