Two trips to the cinema

Unusually we have been to the cinema twice in the last few weeks. First, we went to see the Meryl Streep film Florence Foster Jenkins. We went expecting to laugh but there is a bit more to this film than that and we are presented with a sympathetic portrait of a woman with many advantages and many disadvantages. It raises the whole question of how we assess talent and individuals. it is not easy task.

Then yesterday we went to Britain's oldest cinema in East Finchley to see the film they are calling Love and friendship based on Jane Austen's Lady Susan an epistolary novella but named for a piece of juvenilia. I was a little nervous about the presentation at first but was won round by the approach where each character was paraded before us before the action. I would like to know if there was an American in the original plot - I have a copy of the book somewhere here but don't recall ever reading it. This is comical, light and perceptive Austen not the deeper stuff but good stuff for all that and well executed.