Whit’s Wilde ride recreating Austen
Love & Friendship director Whit Stillman talks to James Croot about adapting Jane Austen, casting Kate Beckinsale, and recreating 1791.
Sheer stupidity. That’s how American writer-director Whit Stillman discovered Jane Austen’s little known tale Lady Susan.
Although written around 1794, the novella about a fiendishly manipulative widow wasn’t published until 1871, more than 50 years after the author’s death.
Speaking on the phone from his base in Paris, the erudite Stillman says he only stumbled across it while rereading Northanger Abbey. ‘‘It was included in an edition of that book, which was probably one of the last Austen stories I read.’’
That’s because his initial attempt to read Northanger ,asa teenager, ended in bitter disappointment. ‘‘I was a stupid 17-year-old who told everyone how bad and overrated it was. I’d never read a gothic novel, so I had no idea what she was making fun of. I went back and read it again after loving all of her other stuff and liked it better, of course.’’
But, he says, he was even more delighted to ‘‘find’’ Lady Susan. ‘‘I loved it because it was like another favourite of mine – Oscar Wilde. It has a sort of Wildean humour. I sort of backed into it thinking maybe it could be a possible film, but it was always a vacation joke on serious projects, taking the place of more serious aspirations.’’
While always aware that it would take quite a bit of time to solve the geographical conundrum of a story so reliant on both letter-writing and characters being within earshot of one another, Stillman admits it took more than a decade to adapt.
‘‘I had to kind of structure it so the action could move forward very quickly via meetings, conversations and rendezvous. Such an approach also required adding characters. So there’s the gentlewoman ‘in straightened circumstances’, Mrs Cross, who is there to listen to Lady Susan’s declarations and help her pack and unpack. She takes some of the place of Lady Susan’s Londonbased friend Alicia Johnson, but we’ve also created her with her own story. She’s a horrible sycophant who agrees with everything Lady Susan says, ‘decidedly’.
‘‘It’s always good to have a friend like that,’’ Stillman laughs.
When asked why he thinks Austen never published it herself, he says it didn’t feel complete in ‘‘a Jane Austen sense’’. ‘‘She concluded it, but in a very perfunctory, tacked-on way. People said she mostly worked on it when she was quite young – about 20. And they say the copy that was found was a good reading copy for the family, which is how all of her novels started out. I think that’s part of their quality, that she was always refining them as she read them to her family members.’’
Ironically, as Stillman worked on finding a financial backer to bring his screenplay adaptation to life, he actually received an approach from a publisher to turn it into a novel (to his delight, the United Kingdom imprint is Two Roads Press, part of the John Murray Press stable who were the final publishers of Austen herself). ‘‘I was actually supposed to turn it in before we shot the film, but I’m really glad I missed that deadline,’’ he whispers, almost conspiratorially. ‘‘Otherwise, I wouldn’t have discovered the character of Sir James Martin, thanks to the actor Tom Bennett.’’
Stillman is right, Bennett is one of the comedic highlights of the film, imbuing his wealthy suitor with a terrific garrulousness and incredible unintelligence.
‘‘I had a lot of scenes for him. The Martin humour became the watchword for the novel because it’s Sir James’ nephew Rufus who writes the novel and defends his Uncle and Lady Susan.’’
Ah yes, the wicked Lady Susan. For those raised on the films of the 21st century, English actress Kate Beckinsale would seem an unlikely choice, best known for donning latex and wielding assorted weapons in the likes of Underworld and Van Helsing. But Stillman knew she has historical form (as well as an impressive figure) in this area. ‘‘The first thing I saw her in, she was already a bit of a Lady Susan character. She really carried the show in Cold Comfort Farm – very dynamic and very Austenian. It was essentially derived from Austen’s Emma anyway. Then I cast her in The Last Days of Disco in 1998 and her character, Charlotte, was a bit Lady Susanesque as well. So I definitely thought it was something she could do well.’’
The problem was, when Stillman started writing at least, that he thought Beckinsale was still too young to play the part. ‘‘At one stage, I was in touch with Liz Hurley and for a while Sienna Miller was attached, but fortunately the timing ended up working out perfectly for Kate and they are already talking about her for potential award nominations later this year.’’
Another who could well be taking home prizes is costume designer Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh, who sourced period pieces from London’s costume houses for the supporting characters and designed the clothing for leads. ‘‘I have to say we kept increasing the costume budget because we were so thrilled with what Eimer was doing,’’ Stillman admits. ‘‘It was so important for the film to have such beautiful looks. I think it would be a lot of work to dress up that way these days, but they definitely look better than we do now.’’
Which nicely segues to my next question. Which was harder to recreate – the 1790s? or The Last Days of Disco’s early 1980s? ‘‘That’s actually a really good question, because I think it was harder to recreate the precise world of that discotheque in 1981. I hated the cliche disco look of the 1970s, so we combed through fashion magazines and I deliberately set it later because things started looking better. We simply ignored all the looks we didn’t like.
‘‘Also, fortunately, places like Britain have an industry to support period films like this one.’’
Stillman won’t be in need of such services for his next project though. He’s returning to make six more episodes of Cosmopolitans, a dramatic comedy about a group of young American expats in Paris. A 2014 pilot starring Adam Brody and Chloe Sevigny was deemed a success, although it did leave Stillman with one headache.
‘‘I burned up a lot of my story in that first episode and the two-year interval means I’m going to have to take the story in a new direction.’’
Still, at least inspiration is all around him.
‘I loved it because it was like another favourite of mine – Oscar Wilde. It has a sort of Wildean humour.’ Whit Stillman says of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan.