‘Love & Friendship’ mashes up Austen and Stillman

“Love & Friendship” is a mashup of two distinct styles, that of novelist Jane Austen and of filmmaker Whit Stillman.

Stillman is known for making movies (“Metropolitan,” “Barcelona”) about well-to-do, self-obsessed young people, who talk in loping sentences.

A widow, she has had a number of scandalous affairs, which she denies, and she is plotting a lucrative second marriage, while carrying on an affair with a married man.

In his last previous film, “Damsels in Distress” (2011), Stillman told a modern story set on a college campus, and his style just seemed like pointless affectation.

Beckinsale’s Susan is steps ahead of every character she meets, and though she is entirely amoral — selfish, and a cold and indifferent mother — we root for her, because we know what she knows:

“Love & Friendship” reunites Beckinsale with her co-star in Stillman’s “The Last Days of Disco” (1998), Chloe Sevigny, who plays Anna’s American confidant, Mrs. Johnson.

Mrs. Johnson doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but Sevigny gives the role a slyly comic galumphing-American quality, a down-to-earth contrast to Beckinsale’s grace.

[...] if this kind of caustic, comic story was really at the bottom of Austen’s artistic impulse, it says something.

[...] it must be mentioned that everyone in “Love & Friendship” looks splendid.

Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle’s movie critic.