Austen adaptation a handsome, delicate cinematic dance

Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) can look rather bedraggled in this new version of Jane Austen’s first published novel, which has once again ignited the “loose hair” controversy that has raged among Janeites since the casually coiffed 2005 reimagining of Pride & Prejudice.

Purists might be vexed, possibly even discomfited or discomposed by some of the details in this take on Sense and Sensibility, part of a wave of Austen adaptations and Austen-adjacent material released to mark the 250th anniversary of the writer’s birth.

Would prudent Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) be penning letters to a man to whom she is not engaged? Would even spirited Marianne be running barefoot through the woods?

Possibly not. But if director Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean) and rookie screenwriter Diana Reid don’t adhere to the strict letter of Austen’s work, they catch much of its spirit. This is a vivid and deeply felt examination of the enduring power of sisterhood, which is at the core of not just the 1811 novel, but of Austen’s own life in the profound importance of her relationship with her sister Cassandra.

The Dashwood girls are often summed up as binary opposites. Elinor is crisp and rational, representing sense, while Marianne practically trembles with emotion, embodying sensibility. (In contemporary terms, Elinor is an Order Muppet and Marianne is an absolute Chaos Muppet.) Reid’s script, aided by strong work from Edgar-Jones and Creed-Miles, leans instead into the overlap between the two sisters, forging a connection that feels complicated and real.

That bond will be tested when the young women are displaced from their childhood home by patriarchal property laws, which see the manor house going to their weak-willed half-brother (Tom Brooke) and his horrid, silverware-counting wife (Stacy Martin).

When Elinor and Marianne relocate with their somewhat hapless mother (Caitriona Balfe) and younger sister Margaret (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) to a small coastal cottage, Elinor will be comforted by her new friendship with Edward Ferrars (George MacKay), a quiet, diffident sort of fellow who is oddly reluctant to declare his feelings.

Marianne, meanwhile, will be distracted by Willoughby (Frank Dillane), who is only too ready to pay his pronounced attentions while the besotted Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum) pines silently nearby.

The treatment of Austen’s marriage plots is mixed. Elinor and Edward’s romance is both nicely modulated and fully realized. Hugh Grant famously played Edward — with loads of stammering, hair-flopping charm — in Ang Lee and Emma Thompson’s beautifully balanced 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility, but MacKay finds his own way into the character. Dillane and Nordrum, however, are odd casting choices for Willoughby and Brandon, and they struggle with their underwritten parts.

There are changes to the mechanics of the plot, some that work brilliantly and some that are completely baffling. Drawing on Austenian chat about annuities and entails, the filmmakers — and this is mostly a female crew — suggest the limited social and economic spheres for most women of the time. The sisters’ constrained position is conveyed through both Elinor’s quiet, poignant pragmatism and Marianne’s loudly expressed outrage that so many young women are expected to settle for so little.

Wherever one stands on the “loose hair” issue, this is a handsome production. Oakley spends little time in London’s formal receiving rooms, instead following the young women as they spend an almost Bronte-esque amount of time outdoors. This approach, while offering up some gorgeous landscape shots, tends to emphasize the exploration of turbulent individual feeling at the expense of Austen’s eye for social observation and sly, ironic comic critique.

As well, the minor characters, so crucial to Austen’s work, never quite spark here, a key exception being the wonderful Fiona Shaw as the jolly and generous Mrs. Jennings.

Austen screen adaptations have cycled through different approaches since Hollywood’s first 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice. The stiffly declaimed dialogue of some of those early, earnestly faithful versions can feel frigid. The 2022 version of Persuasion, on the other hand, which desperately tried to get down with the kids by turning its heroine into a Regency-style TikTok influencer, feels like a hot mess.

This version of Sense and Sensibility seems, appropriately, like a delicate dance, honouring the essence of the 19th-century source material while bringing in modern energy and emotional accessibility for a new generation.

The results might not deliver the “passionate rapture” extolled by Marianne, but as the more moderate Elinor would say, there is much here to “greatly esteem.”

fparts@freepress.com