Just posting here all the reviews that have been piling in from Sundance – we have been waiting all year for this film – from the very first announcement that Whit Stillman was going to film Jane Austen’s Lady Susan, but bizarrely calling it “Love & Friendship.” Starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny.

Now if you know Austen’s Juvenilia, you know that “Love & Freindship” is one of her funnier over the top pieces (my favorite line: “run mad as often as you chose, but do not faint….”). It has nothing to do with Lady Susan of course – but whatever the reason for the title shift,* by all accounts it is a terrific film, with a Heroine just like other of Austen’s  delicious “baddies” – Lady Susan the queen of them. At least there are no zombies to worry about…

And when can we see it? Maybe an April release??

Chloë Sevigny (l) and Kate Beckinsale (r)

Here are links to several reviews:

• Mags at Austenblog – she was there! http://austenblog.com/2016/01/25/review-love-friendship/
• The New York Post: http://nypost.com/2016/01/24/whit-stillman-brings-metropolitan-flair-to-jane-austen/
• The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/24/love-friendship-review-kate-beckinsale-devious-delight-sundance?CMP=fb_gu
• Variety.com: http://variety.com/2016/film/festivals/love-and-friendship-review-sundance-jane-austen-1201687362/
• The Wrap: http://www.thewrap.com/love-friendship-review-whit-stillman-kate-beckinsale-chloe-sevigny-jane-austen/
• From SlashFilm.com: http://www.slashfilm.com/love-friendship-review/
• Indiewire.com: http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/sundance-review-whit-stillmans-love-friendship-starring-kate-beckinsale-and-chloe-sevigny-20160124

[will add more as they come in]

• Arnie Perlstein at his Sharp Elves Society blog: http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2016/01/love-and-friendship-unlocking-cage-my.html

Other links of interest: 

• “Love & Friendship” on IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3068194/
• An interview with Stillman at Vanity Fair.com: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/01/whit-stillman-love-and-friendship
• Jane Austen’s actual Lady Susan at Pemberley.com: http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ladysusn.html
• Or here: http://www.online-literature.com/austen/ladysusan/
• You can download it your kindle, etc. here: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/austen/jane/a93l/
• You can read the manuscript with transcription here: http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/manuscripts/lady_susan/Front_(left)_board.html
• and here at the Morgan Library: http://www.themorgan.org/collection/jane-austen/lady-susan
• The Real “Love and Friendship” can be read here: http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/search/blvolsecond/2.html?hl

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*In the above cited interview, Stillman explains the title change:

She had no title on it. I’ve seen the manuscript. It’s in the Morgan Library. Her nephew, when he published it in 1871, put the title Lady Susan on it. Austen had sort of shifted as she went along from character names to imposing noun names for titles. Sense and Sensibility was supposed to be called Elinor and Marianne. So we took the title from a juvenile short story to give it that Austen sound.

c2016 Jane Austen in Vermont