The Pursuit of Love

[NurseButtercup]

Oh the absolute irony of the words of the character played by Dominic West in this trailer!! Wasn't he start shagging Lily James when he was filming this TV series???

This will be on BBC from 9th May - looks good.

Utter bilge

Lily James really can’t act.

Now be fair, she can act a fantastic sex face, Dominic West agrees.

The Mitfords sound fascinating. Nancy Mitford looks like Emily Mortimer, or is it just me

It's just you.

Lily James can act, she just isn’t good enough to be in everything. I thought she was great in Rebecca. Miscast in this.

She was fairly bad in Rebecca, altho it’s true she’s even worse in this.

I thought Lily James was good in Mamma Mia 2. Maybe she just suits rom coms .
Never seen her in a hard hitting drama.

Ps episode 2 of this is much less crazy.

I'm afraid Lil rather ruined Downton for me. Up till Lil I was happily able to suspend disbelief and wallow in its gloriously fluid and seamless fluffiness.

Then Lil turns up with her bloody mannerisms and suddenly I had to face the harsh reality that the cast were being directed and had lines to learn and carefully recite and had massive cameras pointed at them.

@Butterbeers

How many women called Linda were around in 1920ish?

DH's grandmother for one, would have been in her 20s.

I hadn't got around to watching the Netflix Rebecca yet but had swerved it recently because of all the horrific Armie Hammer stories rather than Lily James.

Don’t watch the Netflix Rebecca if you like the book. Too much sex and nudity and diversions from the book. Looked beautiful though.

Netflix Rebecca can’t hold a candle to Hitchcock’s. It was very flat.

I watched it before the Armie stuff came out. That alone is a good reason to avoid.

I don't think Nancy was? (I may be wrong) Nancy's long-term lover was part of the 'Free French' regime exiled in Britain during the Vichy years. So presumably not a fascist. And Jessica was married to successive husbands who were Communists.

Caught up on this yesterday, with some trepidation as it's one of my favourite books and I've read it about a million times.

Completely miscast, not a single role was right. To go against the grain, I could get on board with lily james after the first episode. All wrong for teenage Linda but better as an adult one. The actress playing fanny was totally wrong, and I felt like her character was completely miswritten too. All the other actors felt too young for their roles, they could have at least aged up Sadie/Emily/Matthew etc over the ten years it was meant cover...

Some of the scripting was ok, and the costumes were great. I didn't mind the soundtrack either. Bit of a missed mark over all though, disappointing.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

Lily James can act, she just isn’t good enough to be in everything. I thought she was great in Rebecca. Miscast in this.

I thought she was terrible in Rebecca. Way too 'sassy' and confident. The character in the book, and in Hitchcock's adaptation, is mousy and non-descript, at least until the final chapters. She doesn't even have a name.

She isn't a terrible actress, she's just bland and boring. She never elevates a role and it's very annoying that she's everywhere at the moment. Must be so many young actresses out there desperate for a role.

Watching this felt like an 'easy read' version of the books (not in a good way). Just really episodic. This happens, and then this happens, and then this happens. Like a ladybird version of something that has much more depth, eg Wind in the Willows or Alice in Wonderland.

thought she was terrible in Rebecca. Way too 'sassy' and confident

Yes. However I guess the BBC are incapable of that sort of subtlety and they fear that if they make the second Mrs de Winter true to Daphne du Maurier’s portrayal they will be attacked for making women subservient.
However, as you say she became much more confident in the final chapters. I wish there had been more of her standing up to Mrs Danvers.

@Andante57 - Rebecca was Netflix wasn’t it rather than the BBC?

I can’t decide if I enjoyed The Pursuit of Love or not! It looked gorgeous and I quite liked the focus on how Linda’s exploits etc impacted on Fanny - I liked that they almost made that the real love story. I liked the modern music and the stylistic approach - especially the snippets of videos and photos flashed up to introduce new time periods/locations.

On the other hand I felt there was a lot of miscasting, some heavy handed dialogue and fair amount of the characters were just wrong. I think if I didn’t love the book so much I’d have absolutely loved it but ultimately I like my own imaginary Linda, Fanny, Uncle Matthew etc more.

I would say Lily James' natural demeanour is 'sassy'. She is cast in way too many dramas at the moment though.

I'm quite enjoying the series but it's so long ago that I read The Pursuit of Love'', that I have no lingering notions of what the characters should be like.

Andante57 - Rebecca was Netflix wasn’t it rather than the BBC?

Sorry, my mistake.

I think if I didn’t love the book so much I’d have absolutely loved it but ultimately I like my own imaginary Linda, Fanny, Uncle Matthew etc more

This exactly. I wonder if there will be a big increase in sales of the book. The three post war novels, Pursuit if Love, Love in a Cold Climate and Don’t Tell Alfred have never been out of print yet as far as I know, no books on 20th century literary criticism gives NM so much as a foot note.

I’m sure this poor adaptation will at least increase sales, and hopefully introduce more people to Nancy Mitford’s wonderful writing. @Andante57 - agree that she deserves better. Nicola Beauman writes very perceptively about ‘The Pursuit of Love’ in ‘A Very Great Profession’ published by Persephone Books.
persephonebooks.co.uk/products/a-very-great-profession
Well worth reading. Interesting blog about it.
heavenali.wordpress.com/2020/12/30/a-very-great-profession-nicola-beauman-1983/

I think the key really is whether the jazzing up will make it more palatable to a new audience, and it might well do. Those of us who know and love the book are never really going to be happy with everything.

Mrssmiling thank you so much for that - I’ll have a look.
It’s always interesting which writers survive and which don’t. Kingsley Amis used to be hugely successful but I wonder how much he’s read today.

Countess what you say is so true and yes old books may well need jazzing up to make them palatable to younger audiences.
However surely racist aspects of old books could be removed for modern productions but still keeping some of the attitudes to show how things were in those days viz. unlikely upper class 18 years old girls would go on about masturbation.

The quote about masturbation did come from Nancy, it’s in her letters.

I don’t know how old she was when she said it though.