Over 30 years have passed since Ang Lee worked his magic on Jane Austen’s 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility, and, aside from a 2008 BBC miniseries, it’s taken until now for someone else to have a bash at a feature film version. It’s surprising it’s taken so long; a quick revisit shows that the 1995 film hasn’t aged very well, being a cavalcade of famous British faces pushing 40 and given the chocolate-box patina of a country idyll that surely no one has ever lived in. You could be forgiven for expecting the same of Georgia Oakley’s reimagining, being a Working Title production and all, but this Sense and Sensibility feels right for the moment, with a cast that feels almost rebelliously smuggled in under the wire.
Oakley’s debut, Blue Jean, dealt in part with the stresses of dating on the lesbian scene in ’80s Newcastle, and it’s not a stretch to see comparisons with Austen’s novel: The rules are simply different for women and always have been. Staying faithful to the book, the film opens in the late 18th century with the Dashwood family receiving news of their late father’s will. The old man has passed the family house in Sussex to his eldest son John (Tom Brooke), whose awful wife Fanny (Stacy Martin) revels in their new-found luxury. Unable to bear the fact that her three daughters are now effectively accepting charity, Mrs. Dashwood (Catriona Balfe) takes her three girls — Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) and Margaret (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) — to a cottage in Devon.
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The two elder sisters are not at all alike, and their casting supports that, while still building a credible sense of sisterhood. Elinor is practical and circumspect, but Marianne lets it all hang out, finally telling her sister, “You reveal nothing, I conceal nothing.” Their choice in men couldn’t be more different either; before the move, Elinor falls in love with Fanny Dashwood’s gentlemanly brother, Edward Ferrars (George MacKay), while, in Devon, Marianne gets swept up by the rakish John Willoughby (Frank Dillane), as her furious “official” would-be suitor Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum) looks on, fuming.
The reasons for the seemingly joyless Colonel’s opprobrium will remain a mystery, as it did in Ang Lee’s version, since both films, and indeed the book, would be a lot shorter if everybody would just say what’s on their mind. But Marianne is the only one to do so, and she’s the one character that reveals what Austen is actually up to; though there plenty of funny moments, Sense and Sensibility is a still-sharp social satire rather than a romcom, and Oakley orchestrates it accordingly; their mutual need to find a soulmate — perhaps the only thing they have in common — takes both girls to London, where their hearts are broken in different ways (“Must London have all the men, sighs Margaret).
Surprisingly, sex is on the back-burner here, despite the dangerous presence of Willioughby; what this film is really about is female desire — in all its forms — and how, in that respect, women always play second fiddle in the patriarchy.
Though Oakley’s version doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, neither did Ang Lee’s, working from a very respectful script by Emma Thompson. But sometimes the material is strong enough to resist a complete overhaul, as Emeral Fennell might have noticed after adding so much unnecessary Sturm und Drang to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The casting doesn’t always balance out — Caitriona Balfe, as the girls’ mother gets precious little to do, while Fiona Shaw positively gobbles up her screentime as the batty Mrs. Jennings — but there’s a subtle lived-in realism that works in the film’s favor, in small but important touches like the raspberry stains that Margaret unknowingly smears on her white pinafore.
Title: Sense And Sensibility
Director: Georgia Oakley
Screenwriter: Diana Reid
Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Esmé Creed-Miles, Caitriona Balfe, Frank Dillane, Fiona Shaw, George MacKay, Stacy Martin, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Herbert Nordrum
Distributors: Focus Features; Universal Pictures
Running time: 2 hr 11 mins
