Love & Friendship Trailer!

A most delightful trailer for Love & Friendship (2016), the new adaptation of Jane Austen's minor work Lady Susan, has been released!

First go over to IMDb or YouTube and watch the trailer: once, twice, or ten times (like I have!), then come back and we'll discuss!

DeCourcy Family (plus Frederica Vernon)

Did you laugh? I laughed a LOT and my sister watched it right before going into work and she was quoting the silly lines over to herself and giggling. :)

Lady Susan and Reginald DeCourcy

From the trailer Love & Friendship (2016) looks:

• Witty - terribly funny!
• Very close to the original story, minus the letter writing.
• Very well cast, actors are talented in their craft.
• Costumes and scenes are very rich and beautiful - for instance Lady Susan and her daughter are dressed in mourning as is proper. 
• There's the addition of a companion/lady's maid for Lady Susan named Mrs. Cross who has red hair!  Perhaps she will be a means of foiling Lady Susan's plans? 
• Very distinctly set in the 1790's and the costumes and hairstyles very clearly reflect that - perhaps odd for what one thinks of a Jane Austen adaptation, but it is a different sort of story from all of her other novels. So exciting!

Miss Cross and Lady Susan meeting Catherine and Reginald

Now here's some technical stuff.

The text from the trailer: "Lady Susan has no husband, no money, but she has a plan: marry off her daughter, find herself a rich husband and rendezvous with her lover. A lady's work is never done. Based on Jane Austen's comic genius. From writer and director Whit Stillman."


Premier Dates: May 13th, 2016 (USA) and 27 May 2016 (UK) in limited cinemas. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23rd and was well received by Janeites such a Margaret Sullivan of AustenBlog (read her review here).

Cast Of Characters: 

I've done some screencaps from the trailer to give some idea of what the characters look like. Their costumes are lovely and most sound exceedingly delightful!

Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan Vernon

Chloë Sevigny as Alicia Johnson

Morfydd Clark as Frederica Vernon

Xavier Samuel as Reginald DeCourcy

Tom Bennett as Sir James Martin

His lines in the trailer were hillarious! I think he's going to be the most comical character in the whole film! 

Jemma Redgrave as Lady DeCourcy

James Fleet as Sir Reginald DeCourcy

 This is his third Jane Austen film! (The others are Sense & Sensibility 1996 and Death Comes To Pemberley.)

Kelly Campbell as Mrs. Cross

 A new addition to the story.

Justin Edwards as Charles Vernon

Emma Greenwell as Catherine Vernon

Lochlainn O Mearáinn as Lord Manwaring

Jenn Murray as Lady Lucy Manwaring

Stephen Fry as Mr. Johnson

(with Jenn Murray as Lady Lucy Manwaring)

My Thoughts: The more I worked with the screencaps the more the costumes in Love & Friendship (2016) remind me of costumes from Sense and Sensibility (1995), Pride and Prejudice (2005) and Northanger Abbey (1987), although much more elegant than the latter. They are certainly different from the early 1800's clothing that one sees in most other Jane Austen adaptations but that only helps me to identify it as one of her much earlier works and give an idea of how the time period was when she was a girl. I'm muchly encourage and excited to see that the trailer doesn't show anything that could be considered inappropriate, so I am in high hopes of a fairly clean film. Overall I'm quite excited to see this movie! And I'm going to listen to my audiobook version of Lady Susan in preparation.  

After watching the trailer are you excited about this film?

What are your thoughts of the cast and costumes?