A new ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ feisty, raw and windswept, sparks up Jane Austen’s sisters

The days are growing shorter, and, in between heat waves and Kelvin waves, you can almost feel autumn in the air and with it, the chance to put the kettle on without fear of heatstroke and cozy up to the idea that there’s yet another wave of Jane Austen adaptations upon us.

Austen will never go out of style because we’re not going to reach a point when we stop worrying about money, status and the gobsmacking difficulty of telling someone you love them. Earlier this year, BBC One gave us a “Pride and Prejudice” spinoff, “The Other Bennet Sister.” In December, Netflix will present a six-episode limited series of the novel itself. And in between, we have a new film version of “Sense and Sensibility,” which dares to trod on the same hallowed ground as the 1995 Ang Lee movie, a film that won Emma Thompson a screenplay Oscar, introduced most audiences to Kate Winslet and confirmed that there are few things more pleasurable than a flustered Hugh Grant.

How do you top that? You don’t. But more than 30 years on, there’s still room for another check-in with the Dashwood sisters. If you haven’t already met, that’s Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones), prudent, practical, the “sense” of the family, and Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles), passionate and impulsive, the “sensibility.” Of course, as Whitman and Bob Dylan have noted, people are not just one thing. They contain multitudes, and so too do the Dashwood sisters. Much of the pleasure of Austen’s novel and this new adaptation, directed by Georgia Oakley and written by Diana Reid, comes from watching the fiercely bonded young women navigate their temperamental differences and arrive at a place of mutual understanding.

With due respect to the Dashwoods’ suitors (save for that scoundrel Willoughby), this is the love story of Oakley’s “Sense and Sensibility,” the one between the sisters. And it is deeply felt.

If you know your Austen, you know that financial insecurity drives the narrative. Mrs Dashwood (Caitríona Balfe) and her three daughters, Elinor, Marianne and mischievous young Margaret (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) are forced to leave their sumptuous Sussex estate and move to a humble cottage in Devon after Mr. Dashwood dies and their property passes to the sisters’ half brother (Tom Brooke) and his greedy wife, Fanny (Stacy Martin, relishing every wicked moment). It’s not fair. But them’s the rules in Regency England.

Oakley delights in the move to the country and gives her “Sense and Sensibility” more of a windswept, autumnal Brontë feel than we saw in the actual Brontë adaptation, Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” earlier this year. Oakley favors natural lighting and minimal makeup, lacing the film with shots of critters and insects going about their business. Plenty of bees, plenty of bonnets — though, thankfully for the women, no overlap between the two.

Love is buzzing in the air too, with Marianne falling for the cad Willoughby (Frank Dillane), despite it being obvious that you couldn’t trust him with an unattended farthing, and Elinor waiting (and waiting) for the shy Edward (George MacKay) to declare his intentions. (If you measure your Edwards by the force of your desire to leap at the screen and shake some sense into him, MacKay is aces.) Also waiting — or more accurately, lurking — in the background is the brooding Col. Brandon (Norwegian actor Herbert Nordrum), who deeply admires Marianne’s passion but is too stiff and silent and, frankly, weird to declare his intentions. Nordrum (“The Worst Person in the World”) makes you really root for the big lug.

The supporting cast, which also includes Fiona Shaw stealing every scene as the gossipy, generous Mrs. Jennings, is terrific. But the success of any “Sense and Sensibility” depends on the rapport between the sisters, and both actors deliver. Edgar-Jones makes us feel the yearning beneath Elinor’s calm reserve and Creed-Miles dazzles, conveying Marianne’s open-hearted abandon. (She’s the daughter of Samantha Morton, so this is quite the year for the family.) No, they don’t look at all alike, but their sibling dynamic feels fresh and alive.

Will this new adaptation win the hearts of those who consider the 1995 film a sacred text? Maybe? Thompson’s screenplay used precious few lines from Austen’s novel; she preferred to mimic the author’s style. This “Sense and Sensibility” takes itself, and Austen’s novel, a little more seriously. It stands apart. Diehards might find fault with something or other, but, to quote the author, you’d have to possess a “most forbidding, disagreeable countenance” not to be charmed.

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