Ah, Jane Austen. Although she never married and had children, her legacy has stayed strong for two centuries. There have been countless adaptations and remediations based on her beloved novels and stories.
I'm not much of a Janeite myself. Here's how my knowledge of Jane's work stacks up:
I read Pride & Prejudice
I listened to part of Emma and part of Sense & Sensibility on audio, but finished neither.
I've seen screen adaptations of Pride & Prejudice (Colin Firth version and Keira Knightley version), Sense & Sensibility (Emma Thompson version), Persuasion (Ciaran Hinds version...and maybe the Sally Hawkins version?), and Northanger Abbey (Felicity Jones version)...plus Clueless, if that counts.
That's about it. So I'm familiar with her works, but not intimately and extensively so. However, this weekend I was immersed in Austen adaptations--I saw Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship, based on Austen's unfinished novella, Lady Susan; and I finished reading Eligible by (one of my favorite authors) Curtis Sittenfeld--a modern retelling of Pride & Prejudice. Both were delightful.
Love & Friendship
Director Whit Stillman may as well be the modern Austen of filmmaking. His movies focus a lot on manners and social class. I confess I've only seen one of his other movies, Damsels in Distress, but I've heard a lot about Metropolitan, which is based on Austen's Mansfield Park.
In any case, Stillman instinctively understands the witty and subtle language of Austen. In Love & Friendship, the tongue is sharper than the sword and a woman's cunning is her main protection against destitution. The story concerns one Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale, lovely and perfectly suited to the role), lately a widow who is seeking a wealthy man to marry her daughter, Frederica (Morfydd Clark, all peaches and cream). Along the way, Lady Susan manages to break up a marriage by tempting Lord Manwaring to go astray from his vow of fidelity to his wife.
Lady Susan is very different than many of Austen's heroines. Like them, she is highly intelligent and witty. Unlike them, she is shows no remorse in her self-serving, narcissistic ways. I suppose Emma Woodhouse is her closest cousin in the Austenverse--but with a touch more sociopathy. She is described as "the most accomplished flirt in England".
Her best friend is American ex-pat Alicia Johnson, played by a sadly miscast Chloe Sevigny (her acting is too modern for this movie). The two scheme together to find both Lady Susan and her daughter suitably rich husbands. Susan believes she's found a match for her daughter in Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett, who steals the show), a complete idiot with incredible wealth. Frederica is horrified at the prospect of marrying a man described as both a "blockhead" and a "pea brain", although her mother insists that he is a kind man who only wishes to make Frederica's life easy. Meanwhile, Susan herself spends her days flirting with Reginald DeCourcy--her sister-in-law's younger brother, which horrifies the entire DeCourcy family, both because of the fact that Lady Susan is about a decade and a half older than Reginald and because she's, you know, a heartless bitch.
The plot is pretty thin, but the jokes fly fast and furious, especially in regards to Sir Martin's idiocy. Although Stillman adapted the story from Austen's unfinished novella, he likely had to write most of the dialogue. Additionally, some of the plot points seem pretty suggestive for Austen (fornication, adultery, etc), so I assume Stillman had a hand in that.
The costumes are lovely, the acting is mostly good (Beckinsale and Bennett especially) and the film feels like a tasty petit four--delicious and sugary, but not all that filling.
Grade: B
***
Eligible
*this review contains spoilers*
I'm a big fan of Curtis Sittenfeld's. I've read her (yes, Curtis is a woman) novels Prep, American Wife, and the less successful and less well known The Man of My Dreams. When I heard she was writing a modern day retelling of Pride & Prejudice where Liz Bennet is a magazine writer in her late 30's, Jane Bennet is a yoga instructor trying to get pregnant using donor sperm, Darcy is an arrogant neurosurgeon, and Bingley is a former contestant of a "Bachelor"-like reality series (titled Eligible), I was like "sign me the fuck up!"
I was not disappointed. Though Eligible is less poignant and serious than Sittenfeld's earlier works (American Wife is her best novel, for my money), it is far more witty. Many of the characters' personalities and motivations remain intact from Austen's classic: Mr. Bennet is wry and dismissive; Mrs. Bennet is politically incorrect to a horrific degree and concerned that none of her daughters is married; Caroline Bingley is an enormous bitch; Lydia and Kitty are shallow (they're obsessed with both Crossfit and texting); and there's even an appearance of Willie Collins--a step-cousin to the Bennet sisters who is a self-centered dork made wealthy from his tech start-up and in want of a wife.
However, Sittenfeld makes some delightful changes from the original text. For example, Kathy De Bourgh is not the imperious meddler she is in Pride & Prejudice; instead, she's a famous feminist (think Gloria Steinem) whom Liz interviews for the magazine she works at. Additionally, the plot twist with Lydia Bennet is significantly different than in the original. It was not at all what I was expecting, and I think it will upset more conservative readers, but I loved it!Speaking of conservative readers--many will not like various aspects of this book. Liz and Jane have sex lives. Liz, especially, has an active sex life with both the Wickham character (a married man who strings Liz along for years) and Darcy. Yep, Lizzy Bennet fucks Darcy outside of marriage in this version of P&P. You wanted a modern retelling, you got it!
But for people with open minds, Eligible is a delight. It's not the deepest book in the world, but it captures the feeling of Austen's prose perfectly--the witty banter, the (sometimes willful) miscommunications between Liz and Darcy, the realities of how money changes one's life. It, however, is more lackadaisical on issues of social status. While Mrs. Bennet cares just as much as she does in the original about social standing, the Bennet sisters don't care at all. In Eligible, getting married is not the chief concern of any of the sisters--although, certainly, they are affected by romantic love, as we all are.
Eligible is not a Pulitzer Prize winning work of fiction, but it's a delicious treat that is also satisfying.
Grade: B+
No comments:
Post a Comment