Love & Friendship
Roadside Attractions | Release Date: May 13, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
36
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMay 19, 2016
It's a joy to watch Beckinsale attack the material — Lady Susan is one of those people whose interest in themselves and their own well-being is so great that it becomes contagious. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesMay 25, 2016
What wicked good fun it is watching this bad girl do her worst. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrMay 19, 2016
The performances are uniformly excellent, but pride of place goes to Bennett’s Sir James, an upper class twit of Pythonesque proportions. Rarely has a character this moronic been this happy. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMay 19, 2016
Stillman has done a marvelous job of adapting Austen’s novella Lady Susan and capturing the author’s tart and rapier-sharp sense of humor. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMay 20, 2016
Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship is compact, modestly budgeted, sublimely acted and almost completely terrific. Read full review
100
Consequence of SoundNico LangMay 14, 2016
Love & Friendship is easily the funniest movie Whit Stillman has ever made. His bristling screenplay — which shows shades of Noël Coward and Evelyn Waugh — has so many impeccable one-liners that it would take three or four viewings to catch them all. Read full review
100
EmpireKim NewmanMay 30, 2016
The funniest, most deliciously venomous Jane Austen movie ever made, and conclusive proof that, a) Kate Beckinsale has been seriously undervalued by the movies and, b) Whit Stillman is a major, distinctive talent. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyStaff (Not credited)May 12, 2016
Stillman gives the romantic roundelay a deliciously modern feminist twist that ends up being a bit too slight and patly resolved, but over all too soon. Read full review
75
IndieWireKate ErblandMay 12, 2016
Love & Friendship may not be traditional Austen, but it's pretty stellar Stillman. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesGlenn WhippMay 12, 2016
Love & Friendship is, first and foremost, a master class on the art of comic timing, in its filmmaking and acting. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldConnie OgleMay 26, 2016
Watching Beckinsale evade and persuade and charm and infuriate is an utter delight. You might not want Lady Susan in your home, but she’s a force of nature in this amusing film. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMay 5, 2016
Only the generic title disappoints. Leo Rockas, who turned Lady Susan’s epistles into an Austen-esque novel, suggests Flirtation and Forbearance or Coquetry and Caution. But by any title this is a treat. Read full review
100
New York PostFarran Smith NehmeMay 12, 2016
The sharpest, least sentimental and possibly the best version of Austen yet. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedMay 11, 2016
Kate Beckinsale is marvelous as a ruthless baddie in a bustier, and in summation, Love & Friendship gives off a lovely, restrained glow at a time in films when almost everything else has the subtlety of headlights. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaMay 19, 2016
One of the things that distinguishes Love & Friendship from the multitude of Austen adaptations - the worthy and the less so - is its heroine. Lady Susan Vernon, a widow of devilish charms, is as frank and fearless a character as Austen ever imagined. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzMay 13, 2016
Stillman pushes the comedy right up to the edge of screwball. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversMay 12, 2016
I can't think of a more wickedly modern romantic comedy. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 19, 2016
Love & Friendship looks splendid. If the costumes by Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh (“Cavalry”) were any more beautiful, they’d be too beautiful. Read full review
90
Screen DailyAnthony KaufmanJan 31, 2016
There is not an ounce of flourish to the filmmaking, but that’s always been the director’s aesthetic. His embellishments come in subtler forms, with witty dialogue and memorable characters—traits that Love and Friendship offers in abundance. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineJake ColeMay 10, 2016
No Austen adaptation, even the most revisionist ones, have ever felt as vicious as Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonMay 26, 2016
The film’s true scene-stealer is Bennett, who brilliantly portrays Sir James as a case study in cluelessness. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloMay 11, 2016
It does offer a very amusing portrait of guile and idiocy. Think of it as a divertissement. Both Austen and Stillman would surely approve. Read full review
75
The Film StageDaniel SchindelJan 31, 2016
[Stillman's] dry sense and cutting sensibility are suited to the meaner edge this story has in comparison with the rest of Austen’s oeuvre. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Nathalie AtkinsonMay 26, 2016
Adapted with great warmth and wit, and with as much of Austen’s crackling dialogue as his own, Stillman shapes lean Austen descriptions such as “He is as silly as ever” into superb character bits for the preposterous twit Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett). Read full review
80
The GuardianNigel M SmithJan 31, 2016
Beckinsale is a hoot to watch as a character with no redeemable qualities, except for her cunning ability to get what she wants. You can’t help but love Lady Susan because of the evident joy she takes in being so duplicitous. Her energy is infectious. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJan 31, 2016
Cheeky in its approach as well as spirited and good-natured, this enterprising adaptation of the author’s relatively unfamiliar early novella Lady Susan remains buoyant through most of its short running time but lacks the stirring emotional hooks found in the best Austen works, on the page as well as the screen. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 12, 2016
At times, most often when Mr. Bennett is onscreen, Love & Friendship is howlingly funny, and as a whole it feels less like a romance than like a caper, an unabashedly contrived and effortlessly inventive heist movie with a pretty good payoff. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMay 16, 2016
For the most part, though, Love & Friendship is a frolic: crisp and closeted rather than expansive, with curt exchanges in drawing rooms, carriages, and gardens. Read full review
75
The PlaylistNoel MurrayJan 31, 2016
Beckinsale’s performance is so funny in fact that it sucks a lot of the air out the room for her co-stars. Whenever she’s in a scene, she delivers so many pithy putdowns per second that it’s hard to pay attention to anyone else. And whenever she’s not around, the movie dims. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldMay 26, 2016
Love & Friendship is pure pleasure, from the lavishly precise sets and costumes to the pitch-perfect tone. It’s self-consciously mannered and merrily playful; a mixture that Austen herself might find just right. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 3, 2016
It’s flat-out hilarious – find me a funnier screen stab at Austen, and I’m tempted to offer your money back personally. Gliding through its compact 92 minutes with alert photography and not a single scene wasted, it’s also Stillman on the form of his life. Read full review
95
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeJan 27, 2016
Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny spin intrigues, break hearts and flirt with scandal just as effectively in the 1790s setting of “Love” as they did in “Disco,” which took place in the early 1980s. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJan 31, 2016
The story is a little slight compared to the grand romantic ache of Pride and Prejudice, but Beckinsale and Stillman do their inspiration proud: Finally, a Jane Austen movie that's fresh and deliciously rotten at the same time. Read full review
90
VarietyJustin ChangJan 31, 2016
[Stillman] takes the inherent sophistication of Austen’s worldview and introduces just the right note of sly, self-deflating mockery. Read full review
100
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlMay 10, 2016
With the plotting and the epigrams taken care of, Stillman seems liberated as a craftsman: Never before has one of his films been so crisp, so tart, so laugh-out-loud funny. Read full review
88
Washington PostAnn HornadayMay 19, 2016
Love & Friendship is such a thoroughgoing delight that it’s tempting to riffle through Austen’s other works to find something else for Stillman to make into a film. As adaptations go, this is a match made in heaven. Read full review
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