Sense and Sensibility Brings a Romantic Intensity That Could Rival Wuthering Heights

For all the talk of Jane Austen’s great divide between sense and sensibility, Georgia Oakley’s new Sense and Sensibility makes the distinction wonderfully easy to see. Elinor Dashwood and Marianne Dashwood may be sisters, but in the hands of Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles, they seem to inhabit entirely different emotional worlds.

Edgar-Jones gives Elinor a quiet determination, playing her as a woman who has learned to keep her feelings firmly under control. Creed-Miles, by contrast, throws herself into Marianne’s emotions with almost explosive energy. Her Marianne is passionate, impulsive and intensely romantic, with every eye-roll, gesture, shriek and swoon making her impossible to ignore.

The contrast between the two performances is one of the film’s greatest strengths. Edgar-Jones communicates Elinor’s restraint through the smallest details, while Creed-Miles seems almost incapable of containing Marianne’s feelings. Her electric-blue eyes, elfin features and mischievous energy give the character a distinctly wild quality.

There is even something faintly witchy about her. Perhaps that feels fitting given her real-life family connection: Creed-Miles’ mother, Samantha Morton, played the sorceress Circe in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this year.

A Brontë-like atmosphere

Oakley’s film is visually striking. The cinematography uses soft, naturally muted light, washed-out greens and pale skies, creating an atmosphere that recalls Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride and Prejudice. Yet the overall mood feels closer to the Brontës than to the usual Austen adaptation.

Marianne, in particular, carries more than a hint of Cathy Earnshaw. She is restless, romantic and consumed by emotion, making the film feel unusually heightened for a story so firmly rooted in Austen.

There is a sweeping romanticism here that could almost make Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights look over its shoulder.

That intensity does not mean the film forgets that Austen was also a comic writer. Sense and Sensibility remains a comedy as well as a romance, and Oakley finds plenty of humor in the novel’s observations of social behavior and cruelty.

Some of those jokes, however, are pushed a little too hard. Sir John Middleton’s wife, played by Chloe Pirrie, becomes a recurring source of comedy through her obsession with the weather. The gag is amusing at first, but the film returns to it often enough that its impact begins to wear thin.

A strong supporting cast

The supporting performances give the film much of its character.

Stacy Martin is appropriately unpleasant as Fanny Dashwood, while Caitríona Balfe brings a lighter and more spirited quality to Mrs Dashwood. Her interpretation is less solemn than some earlier versions of the character and gives her a warmer, more positive presence.

Fiona Shaw is particularly effective as Mrs Jennings. She finds exactly the right balance between warmth and irritation, making the character entertaining without allowing her eccentricity to become overwhelming.

The male characters make less of an impression. Herbert Nordrum plays Colonel Brandon, George MacKay takes the role of Edward Ferrars and Frank Dillane plays Willoughby. Yet all three can feel somewhat overshadowed when they share the screen with Edgar-Jones and Creed-Miles.

That imbalance may ultimately suit the film. The emotional center is clearly the Dashwood sisters, rather than the men around whom their romantic lives revolve.

The 2026 adaptation, directed by Oakley from a screenplay by Diana Reid, also places particular emphasis on the relationship between Elinor and Marianne. Recent coverage of the film has highlighted sisterhood and mutual growth as important elements of Oakley’s interpretation.

The romance of waiting

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Oakley’s film is how often its characters are shown waiting.

The sisters wait in fields. They sit in chairs and on chaise longues. They stand beside windows and look outward. They wait for letters, visitors, declarations of love, inheritances and, eventually, some form of rescue.

Those images capture something fundamental about Austen’s world.

For all the romance surrounding these stories, the women at their center have remarkably little control over what happens next. Their futures are tied to money, inheritance, marriage and the decisions of men. Much of their lives is therefore spent waiting for someone else to determine what comes next.

That tension gives the film’s romanticism a more complicated edge. Marianne may throw herself into love with abandon, while Elinor attempts to master her emotions, but neither sister can completely escape the social structures surrounding them.

Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility therefore feels both familiar and unexpectedly atmospheric. It has the wit of Austen, the yearning of a Brontë romance and a visual language that gives the Dashwood sisters room to breathe, wait and ache.

And if the choice between Elinor and Marianne still seems difficult, the film provides a simple test: decide whether your instinct is to suppress the feeling or fling yourself dramatically into the nearest meadow.