Jane Austen famously published Sense and Sensibility anonymously, cheekily announcing on the title page that it was written “By a Lady.” As intrinsically smart Austen’s writing is, with her tales staying relevant throughout time, she’s also very funny. The film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility aims to capture all these qualities, as the fresh take on the classic introduces the work to a new generation of moviegoers.
The idea for the adaptation started when producer India Flint was going through author Diana Reid’s 2021 debut novel, Love & Virtue .“What struck me with Diana’s writing was her ability to capture a very specific kind of cultural moment, and her ability to capture the voice of her generation,” Flint says. “Of course, this is also true for what we love about Austen. Diana’s about the same age as Austen was when she wrote the novel, and she’s not that different in age to the hero characters. I also knew that she was going to inject such a witty sense of humor.”
This inspired Flint to revisit Austen’s novel, and it sparked conversations to adapt it with the Reid at the helm as the scriptwriter.
Reid marveled about the Sense and Sensibility’s relevancy in the modern age. “Just because the labels have changed, doesn’t mean that people have,” Reid says. “Some of the heartbreak in the novel felt like the kind of thing that you would see someone complain about on TikTok. A lot of her comedy comes from the fact that other people can be really annoying, but it just makes the romances all the more romantic—she essentially says that it is remarkable to find someone who you really like in this world, someone who sees the world the way you do.”
Watch the trailer here:
The story of Sense and Sensibility revolves around the sisters Marianne and Elinor Dashwood, as they navigate the changes in their life that arise from the death of their father. Love, heartbreak, and eventually hope follow them as their unshakeable bond sees them through the roughest of times.
“They both are very intelligent and they’re both deeply empathetic, but it’s just a question of what they do with those emotions,” Reid says. “For Elinor, I always thought about it as a conflict between duty and desire—she’s always thinking about what other people want. Marianne is very sure of what she wants, and she pursues her desire ardently and without inhibition.”
The relationship between the sisters is also what drew director Georgia Oakley to sign on to the project. “I was drawn to the relationship between the sisters,” Oakley says. “They represent these two opposing forces that a lot of women have within themselves that are always at war. As a writer, Austen seemed to understand power and gender dynamics, and that came across in Diana’s witty, brilliant, propulsive script. The fact that the central love story was between the two sisters—I think Austen was really writing about the two sides of herself that were often in disagreement with each other, and she splintered them out into these characters.”
Sense and Sensibility is now showing in theatres at the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia!