When a director associated with the modern world enters the realm of period drama, there can be an electrifying jolt – think of Martin Scorsese and The Age of Innocence, Mike Leigh and Topsy-Turvy, or Andrea Arnold and Wuthering Heights. If that isn’t the case with Love & Friendship, Whit Stillman’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s epistolary novella Lady Susan, that is only because this director’s characters have always conversed as though they were in an arch 19th-century comedy of manners, irrespective of whether the setting was, say, upper-class 1980s Manhattan during the debutante ball season (his 1990 debut, Metropolitan) or a modern college campus (Damsels in Distress).
His films age well because they aren’t beholden to fads or trends. Cameron Crowe’s comedy Singles, set in the Seattle music scene that produced Nirvana and Pearl Jam, felt modern when it was released in 1992. Now it is the grunge rockers who resemble museum exhibits, while the young fogeys of Metropolitan look timeless.
Content from our partners
