The Jane Austen of 2026 looks an awful lot like a Brontë. In the new Sense and Sensibility, Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) and Elinor Dashwood (Daisy Edgar-Jones) run wild across Devon with blackberry-stained lips; rough, linen frocks; and loose, wind-whipped tresses. They are the daughters of the Earth – not an eggshell blue or ringlet in sight – whose passions bleed out into the wildflowers, the caterpillars, and the bumblebees; their reflections, caught in the window glass, paint them across red-hot sunsets.
Director Georgia Oakley’s take on Austen is undeniably gorgeous. Shot on 35mm film, there’s a gentle moodiness to cinematographer Arnaud Potier’s use of natural lighting, and to the suppressed hunger sensed in Edgar-Jones’s bright, open, vulnerable features. Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice (2005) was already an earthier take on Austen, but Oakley draws more directly from Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (2011), with its supporting cast of insects, a Greek chorus to echo its characters’ feral impulses.
None of this is particularly Austen-esque. Her debut novel, Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, but begun somewhere around 1797, is the work of a writer born at an ideological crossroads. Elinor, defined by her “coolness of judgment”, feels more attached to the established, neoclassical culture of rational thought and social order; a world of rules and manners that Austen’s heroines could both master and outwit, and which she mined for so much sublime comedy. Marianne, meanwhile, embodies the challenge Austen’s creative ilk faced: the newly birthed Romantic spirit of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, later revived by the Brontës. It renders Marianne “eager in everything: her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation”.
When the Dashwoods suffer the loss of their patriarch, the sisters are forced from their Sussex home, alongside their mother (Caitríona Balfe), to a humble Devon cottage, a prosperous marriage now their only hope of a future. Elinor nurtures a deep, but unshowy bond with Edward Ferrars (George MacKay); Marianne is whisked away by the charms of John Willoughby (Frank Dillane), while the muted Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum) pines at the sidelines.
How much Marianne learns from Elinor’s “sense”, and how much Elinor learns from Marianne’s “sensibility”, is the stuff of timeless literary debate. Oakley, clearly, has betrayed a very real Marianne-bias, since so much of her film is driven by Romantic notions of ecstatic feeling and profound connection to nature. Yet, to her credit, it gives her Sense and Sensibility a reason to exist when Ang Lee’s 1995 version, written by Emma Thompson, is already the perfect adaptation.
Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility is one intended for the new generation. And we live, I would argue, in very “Marianne” times, with our fervent obsession with “yearning”, reflected in the blockbuster success of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights and television’s Heated Rivalry. Oakley’s film is entirely powered by the breathy pauses, startled gazes, and aching fingers shared by Edgar-Jones and MacKay, who do beautiful work in teasing out such tensions without betraying the vital sense of comfort that Elinor and Edward find in each other. Roger Goula’s score is suitably swooning, too.
In Creed-Miles’s shaggy curls and Dillane’s impish smile, there’s a little indie punk to Marianne and Willoughby. At any point, they could strap on some guitars and perform a whispery Marianne Faithfull cover in the basement of the local inn. Sense and Sensibility’s modern touches, though, remain unobtrusive by the grace of Diana Reid’s excellent script. Her largely faithful translation balances all of Oakley’s “sensibility” with the sharp, witty “sense” of Austen’s social caricatures. Fiona Shaw, in particular, provides a barnstorming turn as Mrs Jennings, with her hideous laugh and a half-sentient pug perpetually tucked in the crook of her arm.
And while Austen’s value in duty (and occasional conformity) doesn’t quite land in the same way today, it doesn’t take much to see in the trials of Marianne and Elinor the most modern of dating dilemmas: how do you get what you want in love, without setting completely unrealistic expectations? Thanks to this lovely and impassioned film, we’re reminded that the author still has much to teach us.
Dir: Georgia Oakley. Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Esmé Creed-Miles, Caitríona Balfe, Frank Dillane, Herbert Nordrum, George MacKay, Fiona Shaw. Cert U, 132 minutes.
‘Sense and Sensibility’ is in cinemas from 25 September
