Here is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic romance novel that genuinely cares about the characters in the story beyond their iconography within the literary hemisphere of the author’s work. The story of the Dashwood family—a widowed mother and her three daughters, who are uprooted from their family estate and forced to live in more modest accommodations many miles away—is relatable for the reason that it’s so very human, and it’s a little fantastical for the reason that it uses actual societal norms for a subtly melodramatic tale of marriage and mores. That’s always been the case, be it the novel or the previous adaptations, and it’s certainly true about this new Sense and Sensibility, particularly thoughtful and entertaining one.
We like the Dashwoods: We are absorbed by their troubles upon learning that the departed husband and father left most of his dowry to the family he had with his first wife, leaving his second (played by Caitríona Balfe) and their daughters Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) and Margaret (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) in the lurch something awful. We are entertained by all the business involved in their new predicament, which is to find a husband for one of these girls before time runs out on their eligibility. We are affected, too, by all the heartbreak and disappointment and tragedy that results from solving that predicament.
The story remains the same, in that the men of interest do still show up and under the expected circumstances. The first is Edward (George MacKay), brother of the cold and self-possessed Fanny (Stacy Martin), who is married to the Dashwood sisters’ older and previously unknown stepbrother John (Tom Brooke). Connections exactly like that distant one are always sort of funny in this universe, such as how promises are made to find husbands for each of them by Mrs. Jennings (Fiona Shaw), a relative whose distance from the Dashwoods is even more of a stretch and funnier because of it.
Edward and Elinor hit it off instantly, passionately and powerfully, but after a few encounters and conversations in which they say everything that is important to each other, Edward is revealed to have concealed the most important of all: He is betrothed to the catty and petty Lucy Steele (Ceara Coveney) and cannot, though he wants desperately to, return Elinor’s affections. Yes, the relative familiarity of the set-up is still here in the ultimate will-they-won’t-they tension, but then again, many of those tropes originated in stories exactly like this one. The key is to recognize when it’s well-executed, and these two performances in particular ensure that it is.
MacKay is unexpectedly great here, unfolding new layers to a character we thought we knew from the contours of the novel and instantaneously establishing the ways in which the character is viable and dashing. He doesn’t, however, take advantage of the easy charm of this man, who after all is on the other side of a coin of mutual attraction. MacKay’s Edward is also a ball of nerves and a man with many passions that are in danger of being extinguished by the least interesting possibility of which he himself can possibly conceive.
Edgar-Jones immediately communicates how absurd Elinor finds the whole game of charades that becomes the dance to find a husband, and that is also mirrored in the performance from Creed-Miles, whose Marianne is wholly independent of mind but also hopelessly romantic when she sees a good man with a solid prospect. Yes, she meets a man, as well—two of them, actually, which seem to exist as a personification of the young woman’s own dual nature. Marianne detests people who have no imagination, so surely she wouldn’t choose Col. Brandon (Herbert Nordrum, dry as toast and just right for it), a troubled veteran of a recent war and otherwise the dullest man alive.
The other possibility is John Willoughby (Frank Dillane, delightfully vain), who saves Marianne from further injury after an incident with her ankle. This subplot, of course, is comparatively more active than Elinor’s by default, as issues with both men lead to drudgery, then heartbreak, then an actual illness that threatens more than her heart. All of this absorbs us, though, because these are deeply human characters, brought to life with compassion instead of a sense of coasting on their origin.
The production here is pristine, from the well-worn costumes to the lived-in sets, although there is a surprise in that Arnaud Potier’s cinematography gradually reflects the downtrodden nature of these girls’ prospects, flattening the grandeur slightly so that it seems like real people inhabit these spaces. When it rains cats and dogs in one scene—the one that leads directly into the bit with the sickness—there might as well be no end to the torrential downpour, and Potier douses everything in the same blue-grey to complement the natural and candle-sourced lighting of the interiors. The film is rife with atmosphere, but it’s nice to consider that atmosphere in the context of a grounded, earthy quality.
It would seem to be difficult to set oneself apart from or above a prototypical Austen adaptation, but Oakley manages to do so with this Sense and Sensibility. The film is thoughtful about what makes the novel such a lasting one, and it has been elevated by its commitment to those long-lasting attributes.
Rating: ***½ (out of ****)
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