Sense and Sensibility (2026)

 

A poster for British director Georgia Oakley's recrafting of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility that features Daisy Edgar-Jones and George MacKay in a clinch is a huge spoiler for those who don't know the story of the fetching but poor Dashwood sisters' quest to marry well in early 19th-century England.

Edgar-Jones plays Elinor, the oldest of the three Dashwood daughters, her sisters being Marianne (a terrific Esmé Creed-Miles) and the youngest Margaret (a feisty Bodhi Rae Breathnach). When we meet them, Mrs. Dashwood, played by Caitríona Balfe, has received notice that ownership of the baronial manor where she and her daughters have been living is to be passed on to her late husband's son from his previous marriage, John (Tom Brooke).

The letter reads that Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters are to be provided for, the exact sum of that support left to John. To avert potential penury, the Dashwood ladies begin strategizing for promising couplings, for professional options for women do not exist.

John's irritating wife, Fanny (Stacy Martin), and her dashing brother, Edward (McKay), move into the manor, and in short order stirrings begin between the reticent Elinor and the courtly but peculiarly beset Edward.

In the meantime, the effervecent Marianne, to whom Elinor is especially devoted, draws the attention of both a taciturn officer just returned from overseas, Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum), and a rakish gentleman named Willoughby (Frank Dillane), who rescues her after a tumble and for whom she falls.

This being the Regency period and aristocrats being who they are, more intimacy is exchanged during a dance than by the hearth. So assumptions, miscues and misunderstandings are plentiful between parties, frequently given a boost by a well-meaning and boozy cousin Mrs. Jennings (the delightful Fiona Shaw).

As is the case in romances set in this period, social conventions intrude, opportunities missed, hopes crushed, and someone goes walking in the pouring rain, inconsolable.

Oakley's film is a sumptuous recreation of Austen's world, dressing her actors and sets in miles of linen and satin and brocade. And Diana Reid's adaptation of Austen's melodrama is lush and poetic.

No doubt, Sense and Sensibility (2026) will be graced with nominations for the precision of its cinematic vision and the honesty in its depiction of the title's two intertwined but often combative sides of life -- the brain, the center of reason, and the heart, the center of emotion.

Which one will rule the day, the film holds, depends on the person, and, perhaps, the season.