15 Most Critically Adored Films 2016 - Ranked
5. Love & Friendship
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98% (172 reviews)
A Jane Austen adaptation that isn’t Sense and Sensibility, Emma or Pride and Prejudice?! Yes, surprisingly enough it is actually possible to adapt her other works for the big screen and as Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship proved it can be a very successful move too.
Adapted not from Austen’s Love & Freindship (written when she was just a young whippersnapper, hence the spelling mistake) but from her posthumously published novel Lady Susan, the film stars Kate Beckinsale as a wry, calculating and upwardly mobile widow attempting to marry herself and her timid daughter off to suitably wealthy husbands.
It went on to earn critical acclaim on both sides of the pond and pocketed a not too shabby $19.6 million – not bad for a period comedy made on a tiny budget of just $3 million.