Love & Friendship
Jun. 10th, 2016 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearLove & Friendship is an adaptation of one of Jane Austen's lesser known works, an epistolary novella called "Lady Susan". I remember enjoying the book when I read it long ago, though it is short and under-developed. Empire gave the film five stars, and my parents also highly recommended it, so I went to see it last night, expecting to really enjoy it.
I came out of the cinema distinctly underwhelmed. I realise it was trying to stay true to its source material, but it felt very bitty - all the scenes were incredibly short and characters seemed to teleport from place to place without any sense of how much time had passed. The opening technique of introducing characters by focusing on a close-up while their name and an amusing identifier appeared on the screen felt very over-done, and the dialogue and acting often seemed quite stilted to me. A couple of the characters were rather over the top for my tastes, and the progression of the story seemed halting and lacking cohesion.
Bits of it were clever, and bits of it were funny, but overall, I felt quite remote from it, and rather disappointed.
I came out of the cinema distinctly underwhelmed. I realise it was trying to stay true to its source material, but it felt very bitty - all the scenes were incredibly short and characters seemed to teleport from place to place without any sense of how much time had passed. The opening technique of introducing characters by focusing on a close-up while their name and an amusing identifier appeared on the screen felt very over-done, and the dialogue and acting often seemed quite stilted to me. A couple of the characters were rather over the top for my tastes, and the progression of the story seemed halting and lacking cohesion.
Bits of it were clever, and bits of it were funny, but overall, I felt quite remote from it, and rather disappointed.
