26 September 2016-09-26

Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys

Out This Week Love & Friendship (Curzon, cert U) Sly arch social observer Whit Stillman meets a very similar property in Jane Austen, in his adaptation of her novella Lady Susan – about a dangerous sexbomb widow trying to get both herself and her daughter married off to money. As with all Stillman films it is immensely talky, and Kate Beckinsale is in it too, as she was in 1998’s The Last Days of Disco, and is rather excellent as a younger, sexier weaponised version of Austen’s Mrs Bennet, mouth always on the go, eyes all over the room as she jockeys for social position. It’s a fiendishly plotted thing, all stratetic plays by … Read more