Oscar Watch: Love & Friendship Designer’s Delicious Duds for Jane Austen Comedy
Jane Austen's fictional universe takes a turn toward the comedic with Love & Friendship adapted by Whit Stillman from one of her early works. The movie, released in May, is now earning Oscar buzz for Irish costume designer Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh and the splendid 18th century gowns she crafted for Kate Beckinsale as gorgeous widower Lady Susan.
Prepping in Dublin for the ten-week production, Mhaoldomhnaigh and her team of seamstresses outfitted Beckinsale/Lady Susan in tightly corseted silk dresses color-coded to reflect her progressive seduction of upper crust society.
Writer/Director Whit Stillman on his Jane Austen Comedy Love & Friendship
Most of the characters in Metropolitan, writer-director Whit Stillman's 1990 debut, are wealthy young Manhattan sophisticates with an enthusiasm for the artifacts of a refined past — notably, the novels of Jane Austen. Stillman's movie just happened to be followed by a rush of Austen adaptations.
Now the filmmaker has made his own Austen movie, Love & Friendship, which opens in limited release today, May 13.
