PROBABLY in 1794, before her 19th birthday, Jane Austen wrote the first of her epistolatory novels “Lady Susan”.

Austen’s modern biographer Claire Tomalin describes Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) as “a sexual predator who uses her intelligence and charm to manipulate, betray and abuse lovers, friends and family.”

Tomalin describes the novella as: “As neatly plotted as a play, and as cynical in tone as any of the most outrageous of the Restoration dramatists who may have provided some of her inspiration.

“It stands alone in Austen’s work as a study of an adult woman whose intelligence and force of character are greater than those of anyone she encounters.”

Let us give thanks and even praise for writer/director Whit Stillman’s decision to adapt the novel into the screenplay for this film that’s as entertaining and perceptive as any from an Austen novel.

Newly widowed, penniless Lady Susan, daughter of an earl, invites herself to the country house Churchill belonging to her sister-in-law.

Stillman has done us a favour by introducing the story’s numerous main characters with screen titles saying who they are and where they fit into the plot. It’s probably best simply to look, enjoy, go with the narrative flow, smile a lot and make your own judgement of Lady Susan. She’s not a nice person. Just ask her 18-year-old daughter Frederica.

A well-crafted story illuminating a family and its sidebars needs a fool, a buffoon, a figure of incompetent fun. I considered Mrs Bennett from “Pride and Prejudice” to be the pinnacle of Austen’s achievement of this kind. But no, an actor serendipitously named Tom Bennett plays Sir James Martin. How much of Sir James on screen is Austen’s invention and how much is Stillman’s, I do not know. But on screen, Tom Bennett is a delight to watch playing him.

The novel was unpublished until 1871. Stillman has engaged a fine cast of actors to perform its translation into film. The wait has been worthwhile.

At Dendy and Palace Electric