"SENSE AND SENSIBILITY" - MINI-REVIEW

Director Georgia Oakley’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s beloved novel is a perfect movie from its first frame to its last. It’s a warm, quiet, earthy, perfectly funny, and swoon-worthy show-don’t-just-tell feast for the senses—all the senses—that never forgets that it is ultimately a love story between two sisters.

Of course, comparisons to the excellent 1995 Ang Lee/Emma Thompson rendition are inevitable, but similar to Joe Wright’s somewhat-precious PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and Greta Gerwig’s rambunctious LITTLE WOMEN, Oakley’s film has both a deep reverence for its source material and the good sense to bust it out of the glass case that can make revered works feel dry and stodgy. The actors throw the language away like it’s the first time it’s been said or thought, while also enjoying the textures of the natural world: reveling in fuzzy caterpillars on fingertips or water from the stream rushing over your toes.

Every frame, with naturally lit exteriors worthy of Malick and candlelit interiors worthy of Kubrick, is a painting, and the environments feel tactile, and lived-in by the most exquisite cast: Daisy Edgar Jones (TWISTERS) and Esmé Creed-Miles (HANNA) as Elinor and Marianne Dashwood; Caitríona Balfe (OUTLANDER) as Mrs. Dashwood, and Bodhi Rae Breathnach (HAMNET), a charmer in all her berry-stained-dress-and-hands glory as youngest sister Margaret; Tom Brooke (PREACHER) and Stacy Martin (THE BRUTALIST) as the fussy, enterprising John and Fanny Dashwood; George MacKay (THE BEAST) as the most moving Edward Ferrars; Frank Dillane (URCHIN) as the caddish Willoughby and Herbert Nordrum (THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD) as the haunted Colonel Brandon; and Fiona Shaw (KILLING EVE) in the film’s biggest yet perfectly calibrated performance as the meddlesome Mrs. Jennings.

This is one of my favorite films of the year. An absolute surprise and delight.

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