“You expect all this romance and sweeping English countryside but it’s more of a manipulation. “You don’t expect it from Austen, do you?” Samuel recently told GRAZIA. That a lavish, late 18th century costume drama set on the manicured lawns of British country estates could inspire fits of wicked cackling is testament to both Austen and Stillman’s keen wit and enviable tact when it comes to crafting arch observations about the otherwise rarefied niches and unfamiliar dynamics of very high society. The resulting film, also titled Love and Friendship (out now), is nothing short of superb. Twenty-six years later and Samuel was given the chance to learn directly from Stillman himself on the latter’s most recent project, Love and Friendship, an adaptation of two little-known and unfinished epistolary novellas, Love and Friendship and Lady Susan, both of which written by Jane Austen in her twenties and published posthumously. Now 32, the Victorian-born actor, who made his own international debut six years ago in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, still remembers the first time he stumbled across the American auteur’s classic and thought to himself, “‘This looks like quite a smart film, perhaps I’ll learn something.’” When Whit Stillman made his debut in 1990 with Metropolitan, a garrulous social comedy dissecting the manners and the mores of New York’s ‘Urban Haute Bourgeoisie’ during one particularly eventful débutante season, Xavier Samuel was six-years-old. Join Architectural Digest on a tour of the film’s beautiful sets.Kate Beckinsale and Xavier Samuel in Whit Stillman’s adaptation of the Jane Austen novella, Love and Friendship

There’s enough societal drama to fill the grand manor, and it’s all highly amusing to follow. Most of Love & Friendship takes place at Churchill, the English country home of Lady Susan’s late husband’s brother, Charles Vernon (Justin Edwards), and his wife, Catherine DeCourcy Vernon (Emma Greenwell). The film’s production design is by Anna Rackard, and its costume designer is the Emmy-nominated Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh, whose past credits include 2008’s Brideshead Revisited. Previous Stillman collaborators Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny star as the opportunistic young widow Lady Susan Vernon and her deadpan American expat confidante, Alicia Johnson. Most scenes were filmed at Newbridge House and Farm, a celebrated Georgian estate, and at Dublin’s Howth Castle. From the elegant period costumes to the lush interiors, the movie-shot on location in Ireland-is as visually satisfying as it is clever. Writer-director Whit Stillman ( Metropolitan, The Last Days of Disco, Damsels in Distress) brings Jane Austen’s 19th-century novella Lady Susan to life with his convivial new film, Love & Friendship.

Whit stillman love and friendship