British Period Pieces can usually be very easily pigeon holed. If you’re not into fancy costumes, social hierarchy issues, and obsessive decorum, most of these movies, and especially Jane Austen ones, are pretty horribly dull. Love & Friendship manages to rise above the standard Austen novel, by simply texting subtext. I’m also calling it: Love & Friendship contains the greatest Austen character that will ever exist in movie form.
The eye of Love & Friendship’s hurricane is Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale), a recently widowed noblewoman who needs to find a new husband to maintain her position, obviously more important than love. She moves in with her brother (Justin Edwards) and sister-in-law (Emma Greenwell) to ponder her options. She lusts for Lord Manwaring (Lochlann O’Mearain), but sadly he is married to a “shrill” woman (Jenn Murray). With the help of her American friend Mrs. Johnson (Chloe Sevigny), Lady Vernon targets Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel) the son of the well respected DeCourcy family. There is one GIANT problem: Lady Vernon’s daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark) and her education. Frederica is also of age, and being pursued by the “dreadful” Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett), a lovely doofus. Lady Vernon, ever the optimist and manipulator extraordinare, moves the pieces around the board to get the perfect situation she desires.
Love & Friendship’s biggest gambit is making Austen thoughts realistic conversations. Hearing these elite members of society tersely describe what they want endlessly generates giggles. Love & Friendship piles on by letting the sounding boards just blindly agree to the cruel assertions of the speaker. “How dreadful it must be to provide education for my daughter!” is met with *Nodding.* These wordless or vapid agreements descend each conversation deeper into depravity, taking those giggles and turning them into consistent laughter. It’s also just hilarious to see emotional reactions be dismissed as trite and disrespectful; the poor woman complaining about her husband’s infidelity is seen as the wrongdoer while the cheaters can act appalled at such a reaction. Kate Beckinsale is great acting as the manipulative epicenter, turning face depending on her audience like an evil genius disguised as a beautiful hurt widow.
Were this subversion the primary selling point of Love & Friendship, I would have enjoyed the film but quickly forgotten it. For someone who watches movies as much as I do, rarely do you find someone enter a movie and so overwhelm it with their presence that they single-handedly put you at the edge of your seat waiting for what they will say next. This is my plea to get Tom Bennett more roles in the United States. Bennett’s Sir James Martin is a movie’s version of an Angel from the Heavens. The minute Bennett’s stupid lovable nobleman saunters into the film, Love & Friendship rockets into the Austen stratosphere. Because British characters in pieces like this usually keep their mouths shut, Martin is allowed to speak on and on about the delightfulness of peas, the number of Biblical commandments, and agriculture with the intelligence and enthusiasm of a 10 year old boy. Each statement is stupider and more joyful than the previous one, making the laughter grow and grow until you are crying from it, on more than one occasion for me. The next time I see this movie I’m only watching the scenes with Tom Bennett in them, writing Hollywood execs to cast him in something IMMEDIATELY.
Love & Friendship is a successful inversion of Jane Austen. The fans of the writer might be horrified, but quietly agree with how funny and disarming this story and these people are. But seriously, Tom Bennett, why did I not know of you before? You sly devil you.