***SPOILERS***
Sense and Sensibility opens with Mr Dashwood on his deathbed beseeching his son John, to whom his huge estate of Norland is entailed, to help out Mr Dashwood's second wife and three daughters, who will be left with only a small income. John has the best intentions towards them but his penny-pinching wife Fanny soon talks him out of the £3000 lump sum he intends to offer. She convinces him that four women can get by very well on £500 a year between them: "really, they had better be offering you money!". This conversation takes place as John and Fanny proceed to Norland to move in: soon Fanny's poisonously sweet politeness has driven Mrs Dashwood and the three Misses Dashwood out of their home into a cottage on the estate of Mrs Dashwood's cousin, Sir John Middleton.
First we get a chance to become well acquainted with the Dashwood family, however. The two eldest daughters are Elinor (Emma Thompson) and Marianne (Kate Winslet), opposites in every way. Elinor is sober, responsible, reserved; Marianne is candid, fiery and passionate. She believes that love cannot be love if it does not make the heart burn; she reads Shakespeare's sonnets and plays melancholy music on her beloved piano. Then there is Margaret, the youngest, a sweet child who unfortunately doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut. She is fascinated by travel and has great plans to lead an expedition to the Orient when she grows up. Mrs Dashwood is a woman floored by the death of her husband and the swift change in her circumstances. She is a faded Marianne, more impulsive and excitable than Elinor, the rock of the family.
Before they leave Norland, Fanny's brother, Mr Edward Ferrars, comes to stay, a quiet, conservative young man whose domineering mother expects him to have a great career in politics or the law, and to make a brilliant match. Edward would rather make a life for himself in the church and marry for love. Naturally, he and Elinor fall for each other, although nothing is expressed overtly. Marianne is disgusted by the couple: she sees them as wishy washy, affectionate where they should be passionate: she mimics Elinor saying "I greatly esteem and like him" in a mincing voice. Fanny, however, is furious that Edward should fall for a girl with no fortune, and schemes to get him away to London.
Once they move to the cottage at Barton Park, they become entangled in a whole new web of acquaintances and romances. Mrs Jennings, Sir John's mother-in-law (beautifully played by Elizabeth Spriggs), is forever matchmaking and gossiping, and she is determined to pair up Marianne with the county's elegible bachelor, Colonel Christopher Brandon. Col Brandon is - gasp! - the wrong side of five and thirty, quiet and self-effacing, and Marianne's hot temperament cannot conceive of such a match, despite his obvious attachment to her. She is more interested in young John Willoughby, staying with his aunt on the nearby estate he is to inherit. Like her, he loves poetry, particularly Shakespeare's sonnets ("I carry them with me always"), and his wild nature is more to her liking. Before long their chaste but indiscreet exploits are the talk of the town, horrifying her more dignified sister. Then Mrs Jennings' daughter Charlotte arrives with her grumpy husband and her friend Miss Lucy Steele, who confides to Elinor one night that she has been secretly engaged to Edward Ferrars for the past five years. Elinor is heartbroken but as she was told in confidence cannot share her grief with anyone. Then Willoughby, who has led Marianne to believe he will propose to her, dashes off to London instead, and Marianne is left bereft, since even Col Brandon has been called away to London earlier in the summer.
Being a Jane Austen story, the rest of the plot is not difficult to guess. A trip to London with Mrs Jennings, Charlotte and Lucy quickly turns to disaster as the sisters receive one blow after another, soon learning that appearances can be deceiving and that not all friends are true friends. But, of course, all ends well, and in fact the ending in this film is so happy, literally glittering, that there is a great buzz on leaving the cinema - all's right with the world.
Emma Thompson's adaptation, for which she received an Oscar, is terrific - it winkles out all the unnecessary characters from the story, introduces some great dramatic scenes, and captures the essence of the text perfectly. And the casting is ideal - a line up of the traditional best in British acting, it includes Robert Hardy as Sir John Middleton, Imogen Stubbs as Miss Steele, and the wonderful Alan Rickman as Col. Brandon.
Emma herself is well-cast (albeit too old) as Elinor and turns in one of her usual excellent performances. Kate Winslet is terrific as Marianne - perfectly cast, she looks and sounds like the archetypal Romantic, and she makes the exuberant Marianne sympathetic rather than embarrassingly sentimental. Greg Wise, playing the dashing Mr Willoughby, is sufficiently tall, dark, and handsome, although I found his fish-like mannerism of opening and closing his mouth soundlessly rather disconcerting. Alan Rickman is excellent as always as the reserved Col. Brandon: his character is somewhat underwritten in the book and therefore in the film, but good acting rounds the character out. Hugh Grant does his usual stuttery, blinky, terribly-terribly-English thing as Edward Ferrars, but it suits his role in this film. All the supporting roles are well-written and acted: Harriet Walter gives a perfectly poisonous performance as the stingy, snobby Fanny Dashwood, and Robert Hardy is his usual ebullient self as Sir John. Imogen Stubbs in particular is just right for Miss Steele - so sweet and innocent looking on the outside but with a glint in her eye that lets us know she has an eye to the main chance at all times. And Emilie Francois gives a lovely performance as the sweet and precocious Margaret.
Ang Lee's direction is excellent: eschewing Merchant-Ivory postcard shots, he is not directing a Great British Heritage Film. He is telling an interesting, gossipy story which happens to be set in the nineteenth century. Yes, there are many beautiful landscape shots, and some fabulous architecture on display, but they are not presented for us to gawk at: they are simply the backdrop to the characters' lives. The London sequence goes on a little too long, but overall the movie is well-paced. His last film, The Wedding Banquet, concerned a more unconventional love story, but fundamentally both films are about finding happiness with someone who is meant for you, however unlikely it may seem at first. This is a wonderfully happy movie, and you will leave the cinema floating on a cloud.
(c) Jennifer Mellerick 1999