‘Sense and Sensibility’ Review: Daisy Edgar-Jones and George MacKay Suffuse an Unfussy Jane Austen Adaptation with Earthly Sensuality

Filmmaker Georgia Oakley sticks to the text to often swoony results in an adaptation that may not compare to Ang Lee's, but has plenty fresh to say about Austen's oft-wrought first novel. Also: Watch out for breakout Esmé Creed-Miles as middle-child Marianne Dashwood.

I know what you’re thinking: Do we really need another “Sense and Sensibility”? Admittedly, it’s been three decades and change since Ang Lee made the definitive screen version of Jane Austen’s first novel, starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet as the Dashwood sisters, whose unexpected destitution entwines with romantic and social ambition. However, the cadence of “Pride and Prejudice” burnishings suggests it’s not out of the realm of reason to bring “Sense and Sensibility” back to the screen: Austen’s third novel “Pride and Prejudice,” after all, has had at least three screen versions since 1995, including an upcoming Netflix series.

Enter filmmaker Georgia Oakley, who brought such delicate texture to a Thatcher-era Newcastle lesbian romance with “Blue Jean,” and now joins the pantheon of Austen arrangers with a new adaptation. Refreshingly, the new “Sense and Sensibility” isn’t a reconfiguration for the 21st century as much as an oak-solid, faithful envisioning made with sensitivity and a classical temperament.

Visually, it’s closer in spirit to something like “Barry Lyndon,” keen on natural light and unvarnished period detail, than the glossy, straight-to-streaming “modernized” remakes that have turned Austen into a brand. (A cameo featuring Sting’s non-binary child, “Ripley” star Eliot Sumner, as a wealthy gentleman and minor character Mr. Palmer, though, is the film’s most “modern” flourish and its closest brush with rebellion against typical casting.)

As the observantly cool eldest Dashwood sister, Elinor, whose reverence for reason is undone by romantic longing, Daisy Edgar-Jones gives a deeply felt performance that leverages her tendency toward subdued work to a grander register: She meshes smoothly into the textures of this world, with the occasional outburst of emotion that’s made Elinor such a fascinating contradiction.

But the most potent breakout here in terms of camera-facing work is the wildly talented Esmé Creed-Miles, daughter of Samantha Morton, as Marianne Dashwood, whose thwarted fixation on handsome fuckboy heir John Willoughby (Frank Dillane, also riveting) melts her into a puddle of bodily near-psychosis. Cue the lovelorn weeping in the rain set to composer Roger Goula’s supple string score, and before us, a sweeping love epic bursts alive with real pain.

Working with cinematographer Arnaud Potier, Oakley brings a grounded visual eye to the text, highlighting costumes and hairdressing that look lived-in and worn by real people of the period, here in turn-of-the-19th-century Sussex and Devon. Inky skies and tall, wan grasses color a world where the outsides match the insides of people, emotional weather syncopated to the actual climate and flora. If “Sense and Sensibility” looks drab in pockets, that’s by design, as Oakley shuns the fantasia of so many Austen adaptations for a look and feel that hew closer to the historical-fiction kitchen sink.

Also written by Oakley, the screenplay doesn’t always elegantly entwine the two sisters’ trajectories — including Elinor’s as she pines for her sister-in-law’s older brother Edward Ferrars (George MacKay, a handsome balm of a man). At times, Marianne’s second-act emotional breakdown feels siloed from the rest of the picture, but the strands coalesce beautifully in an emotionally overwhelming finale that’s tearjerking, but never manipulative or overly sentimental.

The film begins as the three Dashwood sisters, including youngest Margaret (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), and their mother (Caitríona Balfe) are thwacked with unfortunate news: The death of Mr. Dashwood has tipped them into poverty, as his son from a prior marriage, John (Tom Brooke), swoops in with his haughty wife Fanny (a deliciously bitchy, blond-ringleted Stacy Martin) to claim the estate. Enter the gossipy widow and distantly related Mrs. Jennings (a perfectly cast, perfectly bawdy Fiona Shaw) to offer a hardly plum berth at her family’s Devonshire cottage while the Dashwoods put the pieces back together.

There’s outward social and internalized pressure on the Dashwood sisters to marry, and do it quickly, but per any Austen tale, the path is blotchy and blocked by obstacles and second-guessing. Like Dillane’s Willoughby, wily and louche, who quite literally sweeps Marianne off her injured foot and into a giggly, schoolyard kind of chaotic sudden romance. Dillane’s performance is a terrific far cry from his equally great turn as a London rough sleeper in Harris Dickinson’s also very English directing debut, “Urchin” — you can absolutely see the appeal here even as something unscrupulous and vaguely repulsive lingers beneath his smirking Lothario. He’s the type of man unlikely to ever give a good woman peace. Unlike MacKay’s Ferrars, seemingly the more loyal and irreproachable type, both men end up screwing over the Dashwoods in their own ways.

“You are always right, and I wish you weren’t,” Marianne hisses at Elinor once her romantic life has blown apart. Elinor is more keen on repressing her feelings, except when she lashes out at Ferrars for his perceived impropriety after daring to try and court her again. He’s allegedly engaged to a far more gauche society climber. But the sensuality vibing between Elinor and Ferrars between meetings both furtive and not offers at least one romantic pairing to root for.

The agonies of ardor challenged by social borders are ever the topic of Austen’s fascination, and here get palpably realized in the film’s range of production design and costuming across the classes, but it’s never entirely decorous. Oakley’s spin isn’t one of those gossamer period love stories about repressed emotions — those are there, yes, but the Dashwoods are actively pressing against their station at all times.

While the latest “Sense and Sensibility” requires the test of time to reveal its endurance when stacked against Ang Lee’s canon-defining 1995 film, Austen fans will be pleased here. As will, hopefully, those new to her exactingly drawn characters and setting that may reflect our own contemporary gestures at true love and smooth courtship, but Oakley never impresses too much of the modern on a well-wrought, classic story.

Grade: B+

Focus Features opens “Sense and Sensibility” in the United States on Friday, October 16.