AUSTEN powers
Whit Stillman reunites with his Last Days Of Disco ladies, not to mention Jane Austen, for the summer’s most sophisticated treat.
Love & Friendship Starring Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny, Xavier Samuel, Stephen Fry Director Whit Stillman ETA 27 May In 1998, disco was king – at least in cinemas. Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine and Mark Christopher’s 54 both dug out the sequins and the glitter. And then there was The Last Days
Of Disco, Whit Stillman’s early-’80s tale of two Ivy League grads dancing the night away in Manhattan clubs, starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny. Eighteen years later, this trio are back for the most unlikely of reunions in the aptly-titled, Love & Friendship. “Who else does that?” grins Beckinsale.
In the interim, the British actress’ career exploded with Pearl Harbor and the Underworld franchise while Sevigny carried on cramming cool indies onto her CV, from American Psycho to Boys Don’t Cry. And Stillman? He spent 13 years in the wilderness before returning with 2011’s Damsels In Distress, an off-beat tale of college girls starring Greta Gerwig. Suddenly, Stillman is no longer stationary. “It feels like I’m back from the dead,” he says, wryly.
Not only that but he’s arguably back with his best film since his acclaimed 1990 debut,
Metropolitan, the acutely-observed tale of Manhattan debutants that saw him nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. His first adaptation to make it to the screen, the 18th Century-set Love & Friendship is a withering comedy-of-manners based on Lady
Susan, the ‘unfinished’ novella by Jane Austen that was published posthumously in 1871, long after the author’s death.
lady luck
Despite Stillman abandoning the book’s epistolary structure, “the source material and the movie are very, very close,” says Beckinsale, who plays the recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon, a born survivor who ingratiates herself with her in-laws in the hope of finding husbands for herself, and her meek daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark). “I like her because she gets the ball in the air” smiles Stillman. “She gets things going, she makes things happen.”
Compare her to Pride And Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet or Mansfield Park’s Fanny Price, Austen’s better-known heroines, and it’s a revelation. “She’s a really quite major antihero,” says Beckinsale. “Usually, if there is a sexually rapacious woman in literature of the time, she ends up dying of something – burnt alive. That’s what we’re used to. Certainly, there’s always a bit of a sticky end to those women. But Lady Susan sails off getting everything she wants, which is really quite refreshing.”
Adding to this effervescence is the brilliant comic performance of Tom Bennett as Sir James Martin, a well-meaning dumbbell Lady Susan is determined to foist onto her daughter. Calling Bennett “the British version of Will Ferrell”, Stillman adds, “It’s made the film very appealing for guys. This is the ‘guy’ Jane Austen film. There’s a lot of male sketch comedy built into it around the edges, so it’s not just funny, outrageous Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan all the time.” He pauses. “Though that’s pretty appealing too… she’s easy on the eyes!”
Since the film premiered at Sundance, the reviews for the 42-year-old Beckinsale have been stellar. “It’s certainly one of the best roles I’ve been given,” she admits. “It’s an absolutely gorgeous part and I, perhaps, have been holding machine-guns for so long that people have forgotten that this is something I can actually do.” Indeed, post- Underworld, it’s easy to overlook Beckinsale’s turn in the 1995 “Jane Austenderived” Cold Comfort Farm that inspired Stillman to write her Disco’s bossy Charlotte, or that she played Austen’s Emma Woodhouse in a TV miniseries a year later.
Back then, she hadn’t been to America for more than three days – “and I think two of
them were in Disneyland when I was nine!” So arriving for Disco was a baptism of fire, not least immersing in a “very specific stratum of American society” and picking up the East Coast accent. “I was such a fish-out-of-water… so I spent my time madly eavesdropping Chloë and following her around. I didn’t have to do that this time.” Relocating to chilly Ireland, “There we were again, best friends – rather more weathered; this time on my turf.”
Reuniting with Sevigny, who plays Lady Susan’s American confidante Mrs. Alicia Johnson, was simply a hoot. “She’s such a unique person,” says Beckinsale, “interesting, cool and with her own very particular style. It was just suddenly all very familiar – but we did a bit less disco dancing.” Given the costumes – beautifully designed by Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh, who previously worked on Austen bio Becoming Jane – that’s hardly a surprise. “It was quite hard to get through doorways, let alone bust moves!”
While Sevigny was cast first – there was a brief flirtation with Sienna Miller for Lady Susan – in Stillman’s mind it was always to be “a Chloë-Kate reunion”, he says. “They were super-palsy during the shoot, almost too much so from the production’s stand-point. I think they enjoyed being together. They work very well together. They play very well together.” But the on-screen dynamic was changed from Disco. “It’s very different in that they’re allies this time. And that’s important.”
For Stillman, it was the chance to put his stamp on one of his favourite authors ( Metropolitan’s Audrey, an Austen fan, was a “modern stand-in” for Fanny Price, he says). Lady Susan, however, is not well-known. “There are big Jane Austen fans who haven’t read it,” he says, which, in a world drowning in repeated takes on Pride And Prejudice (most recently with zombies), is rather refreshing. “We’re the first people to have played these characters,” laughs Beckinsale. “To be groundbreaking in Jane Austen is pretty exciting.”