Ten minutes in and I thought I was watching an amusing parody of Jane Austen. The costumes and sets were all immaculate, but the dialogue was... stilted and hard to follow and just plain silly. But after 30 minutes, it began to dawn on me that this was no parody, but merely a bad adaptation of a bad first attempt by Ms. Austen at novel-writing. I should have known better -- this is premium Whit Stillman, who has spent the last quarter-century gradually mastering the art of boring an audience to death with superficial pseudo-sophisticated twaddle. This may well be his piece de resistance. I managed to resist turning it off for all of 50 minutes before my yawns forced me to surrender.
Review of Love & Friendship
