Love and Friendship (2016), directed by Whit Stillman

A film adaptation of a book is limited by the strength of the source material. Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan reads like an early draft of what may have been developed into one of her classic novels, had she lived long enough to do it. This could have freed an adaptor to take up the development task, but if anything Stillman is too faithful to the original. His trademark slow and talky approach does the novella no favours and the early part of the film is very slow and quite dull. There are rather too many long and lingering scenes of people walking and of grand house interiors, corridors and ceilings galore. The momentum does gather and the laughs increase, so that the film finishes better than it starts. Kate Beckinsale is outstanding as the beguilingly manipulative and impoverished widow, who must use her wit and charm to survive and to try to secure a future for herself and her long-suffering daughter. Xavier Samuel and Chloe Sevigny also shine, as her suitor and her confidante respectively. The plot, such as it is, resembles a storyline from The Bold and The Beautiful, but the script includes some classic Austen lines, such as Lady Susan’s description of her friend’s husband as, “too old to manage but too young to die.”