Movie Quote of the Day (‘Metropolitan,’ on Jane Austen)

[Two of the more intellectual members of the “Sally Fowler Rat Pack” of debutantes and their dates are discussing novels they’ve recently read.]

Audrey Rouget [played by Carolyn Farina, right]: “By Tolstoy, War and Peace and by Jane Austen, Persuasion and Mansfield Park."

Tom Townsend [played by Edward Clements, left]: "Mansfield Park? You've got to be kidding.”

Audrey: “No.”

Tom: “But it's a notoriously bad book. Even Lionel Trilling, one of her greatest admirers, thought that.”

Audrey: “Well, if Lionel Trilling thought that, he's an idiot.”

Tom: “The whole story revolves around, what? The immorality of a group of young people putting on a play.”

Audrey: “In the context of the novel it makes perfect sense.”

Tom: “But in the context of the novel, then nearly everything Jane Austen wrote is near ridiculous from today's perspective.”

Audrey: “Has it ever occurred to you that today, looked at from Jane Austen's perspective, would look even worse?”— Metropolitan (1990), written and directed by Whit Stillman

I couldn’t help feeling amused by last week’s conjunction of events: Turner Classic Movies’ scheduling of Whit Stillman’s movie during the holiday season, and this past month’s 250^th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen.

But I really chuckled when I heard this exchange. In a 2017 appearance at Arizona State University, Stillman disclaimed any notion that his first film, an indie movie darling set during Christmas break, was an adaptation of Mansfield Park, let alone that Austen had “inspired” this film.

Whatever. Given that the filmmaker's last movie to date, Love and Friendship (2016), was an adaptation of Austen’s unfinished epistolary novel Lady Susan, I don’t think he would deny that she was a formative influence on his sensibility.

Take another look, then, at the above sample from Stillman’s unabashed talkfest. What a slyboots he is—ribbing the very book that furnished the ethical conflict of his own movie.

I must confess that when I first saw this comedy-drama 35 years ago, I felt deep ambivalence. 

My upbringing was blue-collar ethnic, not WASP upper class, and if I spoke the way that Audrey and Tom do here (let alone their earnest philosophical friend Charlie about “Fourierism”), my friends would have handed my head to me. 

In fact, I wondered back then how many students even at elite college campuses talked about such subjects in their dorms instead of their classrooms.

But the more I thought about this movie’s young people, the less removed they seemed from my own experience.

Pampered and privileged as these preppies were, they shared many of the insecurities of my lower-middle-class set: clinging to one’s social circle, longing for someone who may or may not like you in return, wondering where the money would come to pay for the clothes and activities that would keep you in your clique, and making sense of your parents (or, as the cynic Nick says, “The most important thing to realize about parents is that there is absolutely nothing you can do about them”).

The very thought of it might puzzle my group—and the Sally Fowler Rat Pack subset of what Charlie christens “the Urban Haute Bourgeoisie”—but the values that Jane Austen extols in her social satires apply as much to all classes and regions in modern America as in the novelist’s Regency England: sincerity, thoughtfulness, and decency.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Love and Friendship,’ In Which a Hubby Is Found Wanting)

“What a shame you married Mr. Johnston: too old to be governable, too young to die.”— Lady Susan Vernon (played by Kate Beckinsale), to American friend Mrs. Johnson (played by Chloë Sevigny), on her far older husband, in Love and Friendship (2016), written and directed by Whit Stillman, adapted from the novella Lady Susan by Jane Austen

This past weekend, dying for some cinematic fare besides Captain America vs. Superman, or whatever the latest crossover-hero nonsense out now is called, I used the excuse of a long weekend and the need to escape from the remorseless humidity to see Love and Friendship.  It turned out to be a marvelously droll costume comedy about a middle-aged widow looking, as many Jane Austen moms are wont to do, to get her daughter into a marriage that will ensure both their futures.

While the daughter is assuredly a sweet young thing, the widow has the market cornered on the kind of charm that sends men clear around the bend. It helps that said widow is played by Kate Beckinsale, whom a friend of mine (and he knows who he is!!!!!) has classified as a DHBB—i.e., “Dark-Haired British Beauty.”

For far too long, Ms. Beckinsale has languished in flashy, big-budget fare that doesn’t allow her much room to emote—the likes of the Underworld vampire franchise and the equally pale From Here to Eternity knock-off, Pearl Harbor. It’s nice to see her as a Regency-era Circe who, for all her conniving, charms modern audiences as much as the men of her time.

It’s also good to see her back with her co-star of The Last Days of Disco, Ms. Sevigny. Come to think of it, that’s the last film that I think gave Ms. Beckinsale ample room for her talent. Is it any accident that the writer-director of that movie is the same one involved in her current triumph, Whit Stillman?

After his first three critically acclaimed films (Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco), Stillman, like Ms. Beckinsale, hit something of a creative trough, with only one film, Damsels in Distress (2011), which quickly sank. With luck (and, perhaps, some friendly prodding from potential financiers of his films), he’ll write another project with Ms. Beckinsale in mind very, very soon. Maybe he can transplant themes from Austen in a modern setting, as he did with his 1990 rookie effort, Metropolitan?

(By the way, this might be a good time for a shout-out to the costume designer of Love and Friendship, Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh. It wasn’t until I went searching for an image of Mrs. Beckinsale from this film that I realized how often she appeared in black and in hats that, though ostensibly meant to convey that her character is in mourning, always, uncannily, display her to best advantage.)