This is based on Jane Austen’s early work, Lady Susan, which I’ve never read, so I’ve no idea how faithful it is to the original. Reviews have been mixed, to say the least, and although I’ve watched it twice now, I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. It’s rather enamoured of its own cleverness (each of the characters is introduced with a witty little description, but there are far too many of them for this to be helpful for anyone who’s not read the book), but it’s utterly beautiful to look at, so when the whole thing gets overwhelming, the confused viewer can simply sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

Here’s the plot: impoverished widow Lady Susan Vernon is living a hand-to-mouth existence bouncing around the homes of various relatives, while trying to marry off her daughter, Frederica. When she is turfed out of one home because of a fling with her hostess’s husband (very bad manners!), she lands up at Churchill, the home of her husband’s brother. Here she meets her husband’s brother’s wife’s brother (are you keeping up?), Reginald deCourcy, and sets out ostensibly to attach him to her daughter, but actually succeeding in making him fall for her. Meanwhile, her daughter’s bonkers suitor, Sir James Martin, arrives in hot pursuit. Oh yes, and there’s an American friend of Lady Susan’s, whose sole purpose seems to be to be the recipient of Lady Susan’s innermost thoughts. Presumably the original was epistolatory, but she feels a bit superfluous here.

Let me say right away that Kate Beckinsale is utterly brilliant as Lady Susan. It helps that she has all Jane Austen’s wit to work with, and in some respects she reminds me of Mary Crawford from Mansfield Park, incredibly clever and witty, but also cynical and horribly self-centred. But charming. Oh so very charming. Reginald is captivated, and who can blame him, but his sister sees right through Lady Susan and tries desperately to steer him away. It takes a major catastrophe to open his eyes to the truth.

Of the rest of the cast, no one particularly stands out, but they were uniformly excellent, so no complaints there. I wondered a little at the American friend’s accent, which veered into Irish to my ears occasionally and sometimes was downright incomprehensible, but it didn’t much matter (see remarks above about enjoying the spectacle). The daughter was amusingly prone to running away, the bonkers suitor was over-the-top silly and the slighted wife was even more over-the-top hysterical, but they were an interesting counterpoint to Lady Susan’s calmly outrageous manoeuvrings, which she made to seem oh so rational and even sensible. Because this is an early work by Austen, the characters are perhaps not as smooth as in her later works, but the neat plotting and her trademark wit are on full display.

The setting is pre-Regency, somewhere in the 1790s, so the women wear beautifully draped fuller skirts and lacy shawls, and spectacular big hats. I was less enamoured with the hairdos, since all the women wore identical styles, married or single, outgoing or demure. The men look very Mr Darcy, which is perfectly acceptable, and the houses are Georgian era, which means classically elegant.

On the whole, I enjoyed this very much, and will certainly watch it again. After another three or four times I might even fully understand what it’s all about. But hey, the spectacle!

This is an interesting curiosity, a time-slip story jumping between late World War II England and the Regency era. The plot is simplistic, but the acting is generally superb and it’s a pleasant way to pass an hour and a half.

Here’s the premise: teenager Tolly is sent to spend Christmas with his grandmother while his mother waits for news of his missing-in-action soldier father. Granny lives in impoverished aristocratic style with her two remaining servants in a crumbling old manor house set in a vast estate, and lo and behold, Tolly immediately starts seeing ghostly apparitions as he moves around the house. At first, it’s just the daughter of the house, Susan, who’s blind, but gradually he starts seeing more of the inhabitants of the Regency house, and discovers that he can travel between the two time periods. Slowly, the story emerges of the events leading up to a terrible fire which destroyed one wing of the house, and how all the family jewels and silver were lost.

Tolly’s adventures are the bulk of the story, but there are little vignettes amongst the other characters that should have added flesh to the bones, but somehow felt simplistic and unfinished. The wife in the Regency era is a case in point. Essentially abandoned by her naval captain husband, despised as a foreigner by the local aristocracy whom she avidly pursues, bored, lonely and miserable, she gets little sympathy from the scriptwriters, who portray her as merely fretful and selfish. Her husband apologises to her, but fails to suggest any solution to the problem. I would have liked a little more depth to her character, and perhaps some reason offered for her behaviour. Maybe she just resents being stuck in the country when he’s away all the time?

The Negro boy is another interesting but underdeveloped character. The captain brings him home to be a sort of guide-person for his blind daughter, to help her get about and describe what she can’t see. Negroes were very popular employees in the Regency, both as page boys and as adult servants, so this is true to the era, and his bravery and initiative in a crisis was nicely drawn, but I felt he fitted too easily into the household of a well-to-do family for a runaway slave. Where did he learn such excellent manners? Again, a little too simplistic.

However, there’s so much to like about this film that it’s churlish to expect perfection. The cast list is stellar, with the likes of Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, Pauline Collins, Timothy Spall and Harriett Walter setting the standard. Alex Etel was excellent as the puzzled but game Tolly, and Kwayedza Kureya was a heroic Jacob. I wasn’t convinced by Eliza Hope Bennett as the blind Susan, though, but it’s a difficult role.

The costumes were suitably drab in the wartime scenes and gorgeous in the Regency, and ditto the house. In fact, the manor house was a wonderful character in its own right, just perfect for the story, and the distinction between the polished brightness of the Regency and the faded and decaying wartime version was beautifully done.

If I were giving star ratings for this, it would probably be a three. I enjoyed the acting, the costumes, the settings and the evocation of the two historical eras. I was less enamoured of the plot and character development, but I understand this is based on a book which might bring greater depth to the story. Entertaining but not memorable.