Filmmaker Whit Stillman Talks Tackling Little-Known Austen Work to Make ‘Love & Friendship’

Sandra Miska

American filmmaker Whit Stillman first made a name for himself over 25 years ago with his feature debut “Metropolitan,” a film that earned him an Oscar nomination. For his fifth film “Love & Friendship,” he reunites with Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny, stars of his 1998 film “The Last Days of Disco,” to bring to life Jane Austen’s 1794 novella known as “Lady Susan.” “Love & Friendship” is the first adaptation of this particular Austen work.

Stillman recently spoke with Entertainment Voice about finding the spark in this previously ignored novella, why some Austen adaptations don’t work and reuniting with Beckinsale and Sevigny.

I read that you already had a genre in mind for your next film before you picked the story. What attracted you to “Lady Susan”?

I loved Jane Austen for a long time, and I’d mostly been doing original stories in the ‘90s, but I felt I’d tapped out my own material for the time being. I needed more life experience to have more things to talk about. So, I was interested in finding material to adapt for cinema . . . . I found this and I thought it was very funny and very interesting and unknown. It hadn’t have been before. It seemed like it would be a strong prospect for me to do my own adaptation at my own speed and fully get something together that would be a good little film.

What’s unique about this project is that with most adaptations the screenwriter takes the source material and condenses it, but you actually expanded upon the story. Can you talk about your journey in writing the screenplay?

That is something else that attracted me. The great Jane Austen [pieces], first, they’ve been done so many times before by great people. And you’re essentially reducing something great to something like a 90-minute film and maybe it’s a good 90-minute film, but you’re going to have to lose material. I do think that the “Sense and Sensibility” adaptation was beautifully done by Emma Thompson and Ang Lee, but generally, I don’t think all the adaptations have been so good. This is a case of very, very funny material, really, just brilliant sentences that are among the best things that Jane Austen ever wrote.

You worked Kate [Beckinsale] and Chloë [Sevigny] before in “The Last Days of Disco.” How did this experience compare to that one? What is unique about working with those two?

Well, that was really early in their careers, so Kate had never played American. It was sort of the biggest film Chloë had been in as far as size of production and budget and that sort of stuff. Kate had come from the British acting tradition while Chloë was sort of this spontaneous indie film [actress]. She was pulled out of the wardrobe department to be in “Kids” and did a wonderful job in that film. They have very different acting styles. Chloë just sort of exists in the scene. She has these lovely expressive eyes while Kate is a dynamo with just masses of dialogue, so I write the characters that she plays with . . . they have a lot of things to say and it’s important that they say it well. It’s important that she does it superbly. To come back and be with them now, it’s interesting because both of them have become consummate professionals and both of them have done a lot of work and very well. And, so, we were actually able to finish a day early because they were so well prepared for all their scenes. We could shoot the scenes very quickly because there was no waiting for an actor to get their lines right . . . . They were perfect in every scene.

Lady Susan is a little bit saucier than the other Austen heroines. How do you think Austen fans will react to her?

Well, so far [the reaction] has been very good. Often, Austen adaptations fall into the hand of people who just want to do a film and I don’t think they’re that devoted to Jane Austen. I really love Jane Austen and I think I see her largely the same way a lot of her fans see her and her works . . . we’ve had a very good reaction. There was some controversy from the start because I changed the title some people were familiar with, but I don’t believe “Lady Susan” was Jane Austen’s title and I don’t think it’s a very good title . . . and I think that once people see the film they won’t worry about that anymore.

This story was originally untitled, correct? 

I think in Jane Austen’s day it had no title. The manuscript is in the Morgan Library in New York, and I believe it has no title. It was her nephew who titled it when he published it in 1871.

What was it like filming in the UK?

We actually shot it in what is sort of the 18th-century backlot in the UK. We had an Irish producer. I scouted in both countries. I scouted England and I also scouted this sort of Anglo-Irish countryside and great houses built in the 18th century. So, for period films telling British stories in the 18th century it’s ideal [to film in] the area around Dublin where these great mansions of English aristocrats were built. . . .

If Lady Susan and her friend Alicia were alive in the 21st century, what do you think they’d be up to?

I know exactly what they’d be doing. They’d be in Palm Beach marrying billionaires.

You’ve written a novel based on your film?

Yes, I got a chance from Little Brown to write a novel extrapolating from the film. It just came out [May 3].

“Love & Friendship” opens in select theaters on May 13 and nationwide on May 26.