Love and Friendship
Love and Friendship ranks among the best Jane Austen adaptations I’ve seen made on a feature scale. These films tend to get weighed down by the verbosity of her characters’ speech and the tart nature of her satire. Yet, blessedly, here’s a movie that not only meets these challenges, but turns them into signature strengths.
Whit Stillman brings his penchant for vibrant dialogue and social exploration (dating back to his famed Metropolitan) to this spiritually faithful adaptation of Austen’s comical Lady Susan. Starring Kate Beckinsale as the eponymous character, it’s the story of a nasty widow maneuvering her way through 1790s Britain without much social status or sympathetic qualities. As the filmed version, Love and Friendship, depicts her, she’s a wily, self-involved, blatantly opportunistic loner trying to secure a future for herself and her daughter (whom, amusingly, she doesn’t much care for). Her brilliance – and by extension, the brilliance of the novel and film – is the way she so effortlessly and apathetically exploits the period’s mores and standards for her own personal gain; through Friendship’s brisk ninety-minute running-time, Susan manipulates potential suitors, plays hot-and-cold with her daughter and abuses her loose family ties to advance her own position. It makes for a thoroughly enjoyable and breezy construct, one that simultaneously brings the setting to life and establishes an infectious dramatic tension.
Stillman’s delicate touch – his obsession with movement and flow, in the innocuous moments that too many directors take for granted – is what so significantly lifts Love and Friendship. He doesn’t sink into the period’s stuffy trappings so much as he does, like Susan, take advantage of them – he mines extraordinary comedy, and at such a calculated pace, by realizing Austen’s writing with thoughtful commitment. His cast is key in that regard: Beckinsale has sifted through plenty of drivel over the years, but she’s exceptional in a role that lets her strut her stuff – she’s dryly funny with great consistency, and flat-out fun to watch as she takes hold of Susan’s many swirling machinations. She’s nicely aided by her shit-talking-partner-in-crime, Stillman regular Chloe Sevigny, who plays an American exile somehow placed in the position of avoiding, in Susan, a person of lesser status than herself. The supporting cast is uniformly strong, but extra points must go to the riotous Tom Bennett for what amounts to a gloriously buffoonish take on Sir James Martin, a man of decent wealth whom Susan swiftly identifies as the future mate for her daughter.
Put simply, Stillman is a perfect fit for this precisely calibrated comedy of manners. His method is incredibly rigorous, albeit one that results in wild, sharp and brilliantly-timed entertainment. He succeeds in taking a page from Lady Susan’s book: crafty maneuvering within strict boundaries can yield surprisingly profound rewards. A-
Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
When Neighbors hit theaters a few years ago, it was a jolt for the studio comedy. The genre had turned (and, for the most part, remains) decrepit, with the machine churning out star vehicles without any care for structure, logic or creativity. Neighbors – which among other things welcomed Zac Efron into maturity, and cemented Rose Byrne’s status as one of the best comic actresses working right now – was a respite from such unfunny funnies. It held up with the best (worst?) of them in wildness and raunchiness, but took its theme of arrested development seriously, and frequently found innovative comic angles to play.
The very notion of a sequel has long been representative of Hollywood at its most ardently commercial; thus the very idea of a Neighbors franchise felt counterintuitive to what separated the original film from the rest of the pack.
Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is, fortunately, not a step into conventionality for the franchise birthed by director Nicholas Stoller. The comedy remains fundamentally mainstream – these are studio-backed products, after all – but, as with its predecessor, there are enough progressive twists and creative turns to keep it distinct. Byrne and Seth Rogen return as new parents adjusting to adulthood in suburbia, and Efron returns as Teddy, the frat boy – now graduated – without any prospects beyond a sizable Greek Life legacy. Installment two’s shake-up is basic, but nonetheless clever: the new next-door neighbor is a newly-formed sorority helmed by Chloe Grace Moretz, and Teddy – fired from his modeling gig and devoid of future to speak of – is their new mentor. With Rogen and Byrne’s characters trying to sell their place, the return of the rowdy next-door party scene poses a serious challenge. The bones of the sequel are sturdy, in other words: they keep the original’s spirit alive, while introducing a promising new set of dynamics.
Unfortunately, it’s all too much – the addition of the sorority, the continued focus on Teddy and the reduced interest factor of the Byrne/Rogen relationship keeps everything coming out a little half-baked. Indeed, the film is so consciously political – tackling the rule that sororities are technically not allowed to throw parties, cutely revealing Teddy’s old best friend (Dave Franco) to be gay and in love – that it feels distanced from the relatability that made the first Neighbors so uniquely effective. The sequel ought to be commended for its political spike, and while Byrne and Rogen are notably underused, Efron gets an even better showcase, and his character a more compelling storyline. Yet this is a comedy, and so it’s especially damning that the humor – and, perhaps more importantly, the purpose of this whole concoction – gets lost in the shuffle. C+
The Meddler
Between the explosion of opportunities in television and the recent big-screen breakout parts for the likes of Blythe Danner, Sally Field and Lily Tomlin, Susan Sarandon has been primed for a comeback for quite some time.
The Meddler is a startling showcase for an actress who’s been given too little for too long. Sarandon is remarkable as Marnie, a New Jersey widow who’s relocated to Los Angeles in order to spend more time with her daughter (Rose Byrne) and, subconsciously, to block out the fact that her whole life has been put on pause with the death of her loving husband. Sarandon weaves between comedy and tragedy, her thick accent covering a well of grief; she manages to be fully – nay, achingly – believable in a part that ranges from the absurd to the poignant to the bleak. It’s a tour-de-force.
The movie around her doesn’t quite live up to the performance. The Meddler is the latest in a line of indies theming widowhood and centered on older women, from Grandma to I’ll See You in My Dreams to Hello My Name Is Doris. Each balances light comedy with soft drama, reliant on the central performances and seeking to gently illuminate ideas about life and death, loving and losing. The Meddler is neither the best – that’d go to Dreams, which is a beautifully-rendered meditation on connection – nor the worst of the bunch. It starts out better than it finishes, with Byrne expertly playing straight off of Sarandon. Marnie takes up more and more space in her daughter’s life, planning the wedding (and taking on the pseudo-maternal role) of her close friend (played by an excellent Cecily Strong) and attending social events in her stead. It gets more ridiculous, but weirdly more resonant – especially as the aggressive advances of older men, played by Michael McKean and, in a larger and more fruitful role, J.K. Simmons, force her to move on and confront her grief.
The Meddler is scattered, though – both tonally and in narrative. The problem exacerbates as the film rolls on, with writer-director Lorene Scafaria somewhat clunkily balancing the story’s many threads – a romantic subplot, an undercurrent of grief, some pointed commentary on mothers and their children – as they build to a muted climax. But everything, individually, works, and Scafaria – working with a fair amount of autobiographical material – keeps the project feeling personal without losing its sense of universality. Indeed, through all of the generous humor and teary sadness that The Meddler evokes, it ends on a deceptively simple, admirably sentimental note: call your mother! B/B+