Love & Friendship

Love & Friendship (2016) is Whit Stillman's costume comedy drawn from an early Jane Austen novella, and you can watch online on iFILM. At its heart sits Lady Susan Vernon, a penniless young widow who treats manipulation as a fine art.

Kate Beckinsale plays Susan, decamping to her late husband's family estate while gossip about her affairs cools off in town. The plan is tidy: secure a rich match for herself and offload her grown daughter on someone, anyone. Two men stumble into the scheme — charming Reginald DeCourcy and the absurdly wealthy Sir James Martin, whose gift for talking nonsense lets Tom Bennett steal every scene he's in. Susan lies to everyone at once and almost never gets caught.

Stillman takes a minor epistolary piece of Austen and turns it into a sharp drawing-room game where the wickedest tongue wins. With Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny trading barbs, this is the Austen film for anyone tired of the prim versions — a heroine who is a magnificent schemer you root for anyway. Stream Love & Friendship (2016) online on iFILM.