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Love & Friendship
Set in the opulent drawing rooms of eighteenth-century English
society, LOVE & FRIENDSHIP focuses on the machinations of a
beautiful widow, Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale), who, while waiting
for social chatter about a personal indiscretion to pass, takes up
temporary residence at her in-laws’ estate. While there, the
intelligent, flirtatious, and amusingly egotistical Lady Vernon is
determined to be a matchmaker for her daughter Frederica—and herself
too, naturally. She enlists the assistance of her old friend Alicia
(Chloë Sevigny), but two particularly handsome suitors (Xavier Samuel
and Tom Bennett) complicate her orchestrations. After a series of
dramatic turns at Churchill, Lady Susan finally risks destruction when
her jealous rival, Lady Lucy Manwaring (Jenn Murray), arrives in London
to make a shocking revelation, leading to the denouement of denouements.
LOVE
& FRIENDSHIP is an adaptation of young Jane Austen’s novella Lady
Susan, believed to have been written in the mid 1790s but revised up to a
fair copy prepared in 1805 and finally published by her nephew, James
Edward Austen-Leigh, in 1871.
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