Words by JANE CROWTHER
Those wanting more earthy romance, mooning about on the moors and frisson rather than the finger sucking, bridle-wearing, mucus-smearing provided in Emerald Fennell’s recent Wuthering Heights may find exactly what they’re looking for in this handsome period romance. With a screenplay by Diana Reid and direction from Georgia Oakley, Sense And Sensibility tips a Georgian hat to modernism and passion while still retaining the character and well, sensibilities of Austen’s work. And though it’s hard to push Ang Lee and Emma Thompson’s excellent 1995 version from the mind while watching, this considered and good-looking piece manages to seduce without ever feeling truly fresh.
This generation’s sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, are played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles and we find them turfed out of their ancestral home upon the death of their father. With a half brother and his bitchy wife inheriting the family pile, the siblings (and their younger sister Margaret, played winningly by Bodhi Rae Breathnach), are forced to downsize with their mother to a windswept cottage in Devon. Elinor is a sober young woman who haltingly falls for Edward Ferrars (George MacKay) while younger Marianne is wild, a stranger to a hairbrush and looking for torrid romance.
She finds it when rescued from a sprained ankle by Mr Willoughby (Frank Dillane) while spurning the overtures of grumpy ex-military man, Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum and his big beard). Various annoying people interrupt the sisters’ swooning: their Hagrid-esque landlord neighbour and his dull wife, a prattling society wife and – lifting everything with each appearance – a busybody relative, Mrs Jennings, played to hooting perfection by Fiona Shaw. She is MVP along with her snuffling black Pug.
Taking its lead from Joe Wright’s Austen adaptation, the Dashwood world is one of dirty petticoats, lush countryside and grimy nails, but it hits some tonal bumps. There are a couple of ball scenes featuring deliberately anachronistic dancing which jar, there’s a perceptible lack of lust between Marianne and either of her suitors, and there are, frankly, baffling choices of hat wear all round.
Mr Willoughby turns up in a floppy headpiece that The Wizard Of Oz’s Scarecrow might have misplaced, there are bonnets like lamp shades. Mrs Jennings dons what looks like meringue and and in one art gallery scene it’s difficult not to note the tiny flowerpot chapeaus of the background artists. That is to say that though engaging (thanks to the efforts of Edgar Jones and Creed Miles), classy and interested in the economic hardships of Regency women, this Sense and Sensibility impresses without ever sweeping you completely off your feet.
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of FOCUS FEATURES
Sense and Sensibility is in cinemas now