Adapting Jane Austen for the screen means balancing social criticism with the romantic intensity of youth. In her new version of “Sense and Sensibility,” British director Georgia Oakley brings a youthful freshness to a familiar story, focusing on the sisters’ private feelings and the material pressures shaping their choices.
Published in 1811, Austen’s novel follows Elinor and Marianne Dashwood as they rebuild their lives after their father’s death. Their family home passes to their half-brother, John, forcing the sisters and their mother to leave their comfortable residence for a modest house in the English countryside. Their loss of financial security limits their independence and makes marriage a matter of social survival as well as romance.
Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Elinor, who works to keep her emotions in check even as she falls for Edward Ferrars, played by George MacKay. Esmé Creed-Miles’s Marianne takes the opposite approach: romantic and impulsive, she trusts her feelings, including when she becomes involved with the charming John Willoughby, played by Frank Dillane. Their differences are more than a contrast in temperament. The story questions both the emotional restraint expected of women and the risks of ignoring the constraints of the world around them.
Oakley conveys that tension through the film’s visual style. Partly shot on 35mm film, it uses earthy colors and natural light to capture British fields, forests and coastline. Mud, wind, vegetation and worn clothing give the setting a physical roughness that puts the characters’ lives at a distance from polished period romance. The landscape seems to echo the turbulence the sisters must conceal under social conventions.
The approach sets this adaptation apart from the best-known screen version, Ang Lee’s 1995 film, written by Emma Thompson. Thompson played Elinor opposite Kate Winslet as Marianne, with Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman also in the cast. That adaptation combined humor, romance and social criticism, and Thompson won an Oscar for adapted screenplay.
Rather than reproduce the earlier film’s formula, Oakley places more emphasis on silence, everyday life and physical expression. Edgar-Jones suggests Elinor’s effort to contain herself through glances, pauses and small gestures. Creed-Miles gives Marianne a less polished energy, moving between romantic excitement and despair as she resists the gap between what she feels and what society considers proper to show.
The actresses also make the bond between the sisters central to the story. Comedy remains important, though it is less prominent than in the 1995 adaptation. The film uses irony to address hypocrisy, financial self-interest and the pursuit of social status without letting the drama become mere sentimentality.
Sources: Folha Ilustrada.