This month we watched Love and Friendship, based on an early novel by Jane Austen, but which was not published for many years.
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Plot: Set in the 1790s, Love and Friendship centres on beautiful widow Lady Susan Vernon, who has come to the estate of her in-laws to wait out colourful rumours about her dalliances circulating through polite society. Whilst there, she sets about securing a husband for herself and her rather reluctant debutante daughter, Frederica.
Key Characters: Kate Beckinsale - Lady Susan Vernon; Morfydd Clark - Frederica Vernon; Tom Bennett - Sir James Martin; Xavier Samuel - Reginald DeCourcy
Location: Set in and around Dublin.
Other: An extra aspect of interest I found were places we had visited on our travels in Ireland.
Review: At a first glance this is a superficial movie and could be considered a “chick flick”. Looking more deeply it gave a picture of the era, and the issues faced by a penniless widow and a view of the pressures on young girls to marry money. Possibly the stand out performances were by Kate Beckinsale and Tom Bennett. Lady Susan was manipulative and selfish, Sir James was portrayed as a fool, and Reginald as easily led. With a few exceptions, it was only the women who were not easily brought under Lady Susan’s spell. It is Jane Austen’s clever character portrayal that made this an enjoyable movie.
Our June session is on 14 June. We plan to watch the movie Lantana, an Australian mystery starring Anthony LaPaglia and Rachael Blake. To allow time to discuss the movie, we start promptly at 1:00pm.
With all the movies we watch we can look at them as literature – literature in a different medium, that of film. This helps to focus the discussion, covering ideas around genre, characters, plot, but also adding the aspects that relate to film, such as cinemascope, music and atmosphere.
Joy
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Plot: Set in the 1790s, Love and Friendship centres on beautiful widow Lady Susan Vernon, who has come to the estate of her in-laws to wait out colourful rumours about her dalliances circulating through polite society. Whilst there, she sets about securing a husband for herself and her rather reluctant debutante daughter, Frederica.
Key Characters: Kate Beckinsale - Lady Susan Vernon; Morfydd Clark - Frederica Vernon; Tom Bennett - Sir James Martin; Xavier Samuel - Reginald DeCourcy
Location: Set in and around Dublin.
Other: An extra aspect of interest I found were places we had visited on our travels in Ireland.
Review: At a first glance this is a superficial movie and could be considered a “chick flick”. Looking more deeply it gave a picture of the era, and the issues faced by a penniless widow and a view of the pressures on young girls to marry money. Possibly the stand out performances were by Kate Beckinsale and Tom Bennett. Lady Susan was manipulative and selfish, Sir James was portrayed as a fool, and Reginald as easily led. With a few exceptions, it was only the women who were not easily brought under Lady Susan’s spell. It is Jane Austen’s clever character portrayal that made this an enjoyable movie.
Our June session is on 14 June. We plan to watch the movie Lantana, an Australian mystery starring Anthony LaPaglia and Rachael Blake. To allow time to discuss the movie, we start promptly at 1:00pm.
With all the movies we watch we can look at them as literature – literature in a different medium, that of film. This helps to focus the discussion, covering ideas around genre, characters, plot, but also adding the aspects that relate to film, such as cinemascope, music and atmosphere.
Joy
