The Bigger Picture film club ? ?Love & Friendship? (2016) at the Ivy House on 22 February 2018

[The Bigger Picture]

The Bigger Picture film club will be showing ?Love & Friendship? (2016) at 8pm on Thursday, 22 February 2018, at the Ivy House.

Inspired by Jane Austen?s epistolary novel 'Lady Susan' (c1794), Kate Beckinsale stars as the still relatively young, but widowed, Lady Susan Vernon, attempting to arrange ?good? (in terms of status and finance) marriages for both herself and her teenage daughter Frederica, currently at a boarding school that Lady Susan cannot afford. Here, at least, we are on familiar Austen territory but we soon cross out of that as Lady Susan?s forward manner and disregard of convention leaves her a racy and scandalous heroine very different from the staid and constrained heroines of the wider-read Austen cannon. Lady Susan is excluded from the Manwaring estate (her affair with her host precipitating this) and descends on Churchill, the house of her somewhat disapproving brother-in-law.

There she takes up with the brother of her brother-in-law?s wife, to the dismay of his parents, who are well aware of her (lack of) reputation. Meanwhile her daughter runs away from school, is expelled and appears with a follower of her own.

After that things become complex, with more deceit, exposure, near escapes and strange coincidences.

A strong cast who can handle period comedy and farce includes Stephen Fry as the dreary husband of Lady Susan?s almost equally racy friend and confident, James Fleet and Gemma Redgrave. Whit Stillman manages to place a modern knowingness into a well handled period setting, and despite a plot which is tissue thin, this film manages to delight. Filmed mainly in Ireland (you can?t find the late eighteen century in England nowadays at the price).

Director: Whit Stillman

Ireland, France, Netherlands

Running time: 90 minutes.

Cert: U

We say: It is the Austen for people who don?t think they like Austen, but also for those who do. Whit Stillman has only made 5 feature films in 26 years, Why?

Film at 8pm.

Tickets ?7 from WeGotTickets: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/426299

The Bigger Picture website: http://www.thebiggerpic.co.uk/

The Bigger Picture Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/thebiggerpic/

Location:

THE IVY HOUSE

40 Stuart Road

Nunhead

London SE15 3BE