The planning to create such an excellent and intelligent comedy must have taken months, or even years. It would take forever to find the right balance of empathy and disgust, hilarity and serious emotion only to bolster it. Yet, here it is all up on screen. Whit Stillman’s Love and Friendship feels like a film that could only have been focused by a single artistic mind. It’s a film that hysterically burns down the structure of the British hierarchy by ultimately showing it through manipulation. Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale (in a dramatic role she’s deserved forever)) is a true manipulator of the existing system, and yet is trapped in it. You can’t help but despise her as she manipulates such personable and beautiful people, yet the reason she has to is because of the rigid system that cripples all available love. It’s a fascinating characterization and Beckinsale only accentuates Lady Susan’s predicament through the acting that she pristinely pulls off. The dialogue is delivered in a way reminiscent to Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America, in that it never slows down. This gives a sense of urgency to what Beckinsale has to say; despite her bitchy (to put it lightly) demeanor, Susan is only barely staying above things. She talks like she is above everybody else in trying to control the system because it’s almost as if she resents it to the point of wanting to master it. The last shot of the film so perfectly ties this up that you’re left with a sense of both “Awww, but she deserves love like that rest of them,” and “Haha that b*** got what she deserved.” Beckinsale is so grounded in this movie that it’s impossible to separate her from any part of it. The supporting characters are used to challenge her worldview, with some defending it and others only supporting the almost tearful cynicism that Lady Susan represents. Susan’s own daughter, Frederica (Morfydd Clark), represents the more reasonable and enjoyable side of the system, existing in a different sort of idiocy or at least ignorance than Susan is. She seems to at least believe that the system doesn’t need to be manipulated. Clark manages to create such a great character out of Frederica, only accentuating how the nuance of her character compared to Susan, which creates a dichotomy in the system that only serves to make the world of Love and Friendship richer. All the entertaining or attention drawing characters do this. Tom Bennett as Sir James Martin shows the result of a person who has too much trust in his place in the system and is not willing to escape the established rules of everything, resulting in him seeming like one of the funniest yet ungodly endearing characters ever put to screen. It’s deliciously deceptive how these characters are built around each other only to support the underlying motivations of themselves. Good thing that they are so strong too. Much of the comedy and punchlines that are present in Love and Friendship are based off the audience being unaware of things that characters know. This leaves a lot of the moving pieces of the story to the dialogue. How Stillman structures his conversation all but alleviates any problems that could arise in following action based in dialogue by employing a good amount of natural repetition, and building certain tantalizing elements into the story that pay off in startling ways. Bennett’s Sir James receives the most tickling one of these near the end of the film in a moment of dialogue so uncomfortable and well played that it left the audience in stitches, and me squirming in my seat. The number of things to talk about in the excellent way characters are built to the way that compositions slyly push the almost radical point of the film are infinite. Love and Friendship is not simply about a woman controlling her loved ones; it’s about the person and world that would make her do such a thing and the emotion that Stillman, Beckinsale, and the cast and crew drag out that is unlike anything that can be seen in theatres today. I give Love and Friendship a 9.5 out of 10. ...for the record the .5 deduction comes from the fact that much of the action is based in dialogue, and the difficulties inherent with that. The film, as I already mentioned, finds it’s way around them, but it was an unavoidable problem.
1 Comment
chenske
6/11/2016 05:52:04 pm
Came to visit and see what you've been watching this summer. I didn't realize that Stillman had a film coming out; it looks very promising based upon your review. And who didn't love his trilogy back in the 1990s, right? You know Metropolitan, Barcelona, Last Days of Disco? Those fine films and your review are sufficient argument to go see this film. And funny that you mention Noah Baumbach in the review. Just watched Frances Ha. Have you seen it? Some consider it some of his finest work.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |