My age, 45 years, allows me to have an admiring memory of the adaptation that, in 1995, Ang Lee made of Jane Austen’s first novel. Sense and Sensibility was also my first foray into the universe of the British writer and everything fascinated me: the wardrobe, that elegant way of speaking, the palaces in which they lived, the frivolities (and not so much) that concerned them, the English countryside, the triumph of love and a Hugh Grant as funny as in Four Weddings and a Funeral but with the starched shirt collar. If moreover it served for Emma Thompson to become the only actress to have an Oscar for Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay and deliver a fantastic speech, one could not ask for more.
With all this, I wasn’t one of those who were very excited about the new adaptation that opens today in theaters, a story that, one way or another, has been brought to the screen a dozen times in the last half-century. When I left the press screening I understood that perhaps each generation needs a revision of this immortal classic, adapted (in one way or another) to its codes, not to its language (fortunately) but to a certain way of seeing life and family and social relationships, that are not the same as those three decades ago.
Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility, which she adapted together with Diana Reid, is a visually impeccable film, with two protagonists united by a beautiful chemistry and a story in which the most important thing (the most important) is not the ceremony of sentimental confusion between the Dashwoods and the men who cross their paths, but the happiness of having by your side a person who is always there, in wealth and in poverty, in health and in illness, and that bond with that person is a biological and emotional bond as indestructible as it is moving.
The Forces of Nature
With Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles as Elinor and Marianne Dashwood respectively, the new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility features familiar faces such as George McKay in the role of Edward Ferrars, Caitriona Balfe portraying Mrs. Dashwood and Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Jennings, among others. A cast that could be criticized, perhaps McKay isn’t as charismatic as that Hugh Grant, perhaps Balfe seems too young for a role that has always been played by older actresses (which could have been historically inaccurate), and to which, after watching the film, it’s impossible to fault him.
Bodhi Rae Breatnach como Margaret Dashwood y Caitriona Balfe como la señora Dashwood en una imagen de Sentido y Sensibilidad.
The adaptation of Sense and Sensibility by Oakley shows that Jane Austen’s stories do not lose relevance with the passing of years and, just as her books continue to be sold in bookstores, the occasions on which they are transformed into an audiovisual product can be accurate and interesting. The cinematography of this new version takes center stage over the previous ones and, just like Bodhi Rae Breatnach, the youngest of the Dashwoods, it presents itself as free verse distant from the concerns of her sisters; the surrounding environment is a fundamental element when constructing the less refined but perhaps more faithful nineteenth-century construction.
Elinor and Marianne are two different and complementary women, who must face a life that bears little resemblance to their past when their father dies and the house in which they live passes into the hands of their half-brother, John. It is then when their home fills with strange people willing to make their lives impossible, such as the heir’s wife, to steal their hearts, like her brother, or to bring them closer to a life that no longer seems theirs and take them to London to find a lifeline in the form of a husband, as is the case with Mrs. Jennings.
Esmé Creed-Miles como Marianne Dashwood en una imagen de Sentido y Sensibilidad.
But beforehand, they will have to leave their beloved mansion to settle in a country house, more like a cottage, where luxuries are as scarce as space. The four Dashwoods will face their fate with all possible resolve, Elinor longing for news about the young man with whom she seemed to have much in common but without showing it, Marianne trying to find someone who conquers her with the passion and the abandon with which she lives her own life. A contrast that will lead to misunderstandings but that will not be able to destroy the beautiful bond that unites them.
Entertaining and romantic, Sense and Sensibility is a film that, through a production design as personal as it is interesting, appeals to the youth of the Dashwood sisters, and to Marianne’s rebelliousness, to create a story that recovers the spirit of its author and that, more than two centuries after its publication, continues to be engaging. A work in which the hook is the emotional yearnings, but its true raison d’être is the relationship between its protagonists.
And whether you know Sense and Sensibility from Ang Lee’s film, whether you have read it or have watched any of its television adaptations, it has the power to feel novel and thrilling. And if you haven’t done it, because you are too young or you resisted, it is the doorway to a universe as wonderful as inexhaustible.
