Love and Friendship
Love and Friendship looks like a Jane Austen film, when you first glance in its direction. This is largely because it’s based on Lady Susan, Austen’s epistolary novella that you’ve probably only read if you’re a hardcore Austen reader or someone who picked up a volume with a title like “The Complete Works of Jane Austen” that took it’s remit rather seriously. And because you walk into it thinking its an Austen film, and you know exactly what you’re going to get, Love and Friendship is all kinds of fucking glorious as it starts to fuck with those expectations. It’s incredibly funny without devolving into parody; incredibly engaging, without actually having a sympathetic character; incredibly slippery, in that there are machinations at work throughout the film and you’re never entirely sure of a character’s motivations. It is a two-hour love-letter to the fact that Austen is incredibly funny, when you read her works, and the film takes it as a personal