Even though she lived between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jane Austen continues to pay us a visit at the cinema with her stories and characters, which remain remarkably timely. Much has changed since the Regency era, and not only in clothes and hairstyles, yet love—its joys and its sorrows, its flutterings and its flirtations—has remained the same. It is no accident, then, that the writer who never married and died young has often been picked apart by screenwriters and directors. To the various screen adaptations for the big screen, a new Sense and Sensibility now adds itself, directed by Georgia Oakley and written by Diana Reid. The book that inspired it is Austen’s debut novel, which was first published in 1811. On the volume the author’s name did not appear because at the time it was considered improper for a woman of high society to pursue paid work. The first edition’s 750 copies sold out immediately, and since then the book has never ceased to be reprinted.
The title of Jane Austen’s novel takes its cue from the temperaments of the two main characters. Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, though very close, possess diametrically opposed personalities. Elinor is rational, measured, and wise. Marianne, on the other hand, is instinctive, impulsive, and unrepentantly romantic. As Diana Reid explains: “They are both very intelligent and deeply empathetic. For Elinor I’ve always pictured a conflict between duty and desire: she constantly thinks of what others want. Marianne, instead, is very sure of what she wants and pursues her own desire with ardor and without inhibition.”
But who are Elinor and Marianne Dashwood? They are the daughters of Mrs. Dashwood, who, after her husband’s death, finds herself penniless because the estates of the late husband pass to her eldest son, John, born from her first marriage. Thus the two girls, along with their mother and their younger sister Margaret, must leave Sussex and move to Devonshire, where a distant cousin of Mrs. Dashwood rents them Barton Cottage at a very low price. The sisters’ new life proves far from monotonous, filled with love at first sight, old flames, tender friendships, and a few tears.
In the new Sense and Sensibility, both love and social satire play significant roles just as in the source material, but Georgia Oakley also pays great attention to the landscape, which becomes almost another character in the film. Nature seems to amplify the Dashwood sisters’ emotions, and far from being “evil stepmothers,” it embraces Elinor and Marianne, who, from scene to scene, grow increasingly united. Austen’s novels abound with sisters, but the Dashwoods possess something extra, perhaps born from shared experience, if not from poverty, then at least from a sudden change in living conditions. Likewise, the film’s photography is not glossy but signals a strong search for realism, and when the romantic feeling erupts, it is told with sincerity, enchantment, and, in some cases, a trace of melancholy. To preserve a sense of authenticity, the production decided to abandon studios and build the sets in actual historic locations—country houses in a swathe of England stretching from Dartmoor to Oxfordshire.
In Sense and Sensibility, Elinor Dashwood bears the face of Daisy Edgar-Jones, while Marianne is portrayed by Esme Creed-Miles. We see them both in a clip from the film that we are pleased to premiere here. Watching it you will notice that the language has not been modernized but remains faithful to the era of Jane Austen.
Sense and Sensibility arrives in our cinemas on October 22, distributed by Universal Pictures International Italy.
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