Love & Friendship

Love & Friendship, in which Jane Austen's Lady Susan Vernon is Entirely Vindicated, Concerning the Beautiful Lady Susan Vernon, Her Cunning Daughter & the Strange Antagonism of the DeCourcy Family by Whit Stillman, 276 pages

At long last, the true story behind one of Jane Austen's least celebrated novels has been told.  The truth-teller is none other than Rufus Martin-Colonna de Cesari-Rocca, the nephew (by marriage) of the same Lady Susanna Grey Vernon so scandalously slandered in Austen's early attempt at an epistolary novel, Lady Susan.  Only a man with his remarkable memory and thorough understanding of the personalities involved (not to mention extraordinary good sense and undoubted personal integrity) could hope to thwart the gawfers - including Ms Austen herself - who sought (vainly, in the end) to despisefy the honest Lady.  Truly, after reading his refreshing corrective, any objective reader must conclude that, had it not been for Lady Susan's particular virtues, the story could not possibly have reached the happy ending it did.

Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship is only 153 pages long - the remainder of the book is taken up with Austen's original Lady Susan, with appropriate footnotes by Mr Martin-Colonna highlighting the deficiencies in the text.  One feature that distinguishes Stillman above virtually every other filmmaker of his generation is a use of irony which never descends into cynicism.  This is itself the product of a fundamentally optimistic perspective on human society - no matter how venal, manipulative, and deceitful his characters, their destructiveness always seems to serve some purpose, however obscure.  Such is the case in Love & Friendship, a romance and a comedy.