With Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles as the Dashwood sisters, this fresh take on a beloved classic is not to be confused with Ang Lee’s
There’s no reason for anyone working on a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility to be intimidated by the celebrated 1995 movie by director Ang Lee and screenwriter Emma Thompson, any more than they should be or overawed by Austen’s original novel. Sacred cows are there to be … not slain, but re-invented. The decision to bring out a next-gen Sense and Sensibility, with a new young cast – as opposed to, say, a new Northanger Abbey or a new spin on the unfinished The Watsons – might bemuse some and at first it bemused me, like hearing about a Love Actually remake starring Millie Bobby Brown. But this turns out to be a more downbeat, ruminative version, happening in much cloudier weather than 30 years ago and without the sugar-rush final wedding scene. The mood is cooler, but interestingly austere, sober and thoughtful. There are also some strange casting decisions.
The sisters at the heart of the story, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, played in 1995 by Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, are now played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles, and frankly don’t look and sound much like the sisters we thought we knew. They look like young women who knew each other reasonably well at uni and are now in a flatshare in London. It is a story of financial and romantic crisis. Mrs Dashwood and her three daughters, having happily occupied a handsome Sussex estate, are forced to move to humble Barton Cottage in Devon when Mrs Dashwood’s stepson John Dashwood inherits their property and effectively evicted them.
