The trailer has dropped for the latest Jane Austen adaptation, a feature-film version of Sense and Sensibility, and I KNOW you all have thoughts! This one is directed by Georgia Oakley and stars Daisy Edgar-Jones (Gentleman Jack) as Elinor, Esmé Creed-Miles (The Doll Factory) as Marianne, Catríona Balfe (Outlander) as Mrs. Dashwood, along with Frank Dillane (In the Heart of the Sea, The Essex Serpent) as Willoughby, George MacKay (Ophelia, 1917, Munich – the Edge of War) as Edward, and Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Jennings.
According to an Instagram post by the costume designer, Grace Snell, they’ve set this adaptation in the 1790s (although Austen published the novel in 1811, she first drafted it in the 1790s):
View this post on Instagram
And now, my thoughts:
1) Everyone looks like it’s 3am, someone has just banged on the front door, and we all jumped out of bed in our nightclothes:
2) They only had mud for dye:
3) I like the evolved-from-a-chemise-gown cuts:
4) As well as a few more elements:
5) The caps look more “religious sect” than 1790s to me:
6) As they should be, the bitches are always the best dressed:
Okay, give us your take on the Sense and Sensibility trailer!
Oh, dear — apparently there was no money available for light bulbs to light the sets during this production. Of course, I have the old-fashioned notion that you should be able actually to see what’s going on in a movie.
I’ll never get over the amount of filmmakers who apparently don’t understand that film is a visual medium. As in “the audience needs to be able to see what is going on.”
Let’s just make everything louder!
Sad sack-y gowns for sad sack characters I guess? Oh well, off to watch the 1995 version again.
I’m curious who’ll play Lucy and/or Anne Steele? Either way I’m not impressed with the hair, the dreary visuals or the lighting! I Think I’ll stick to the 1995 movie version. Also, do we really need another limited series adaptation of Jane Eyre, or the Age of Innocence, for that matter?
FFS, mourning clothing doesn’t equal boring! I have a doll I only dress in mourning colors, and I make gorram sure she’s stylish. Right now she’s rocking a 1920s French dress with a slightly old fashioned (art nourveau) print.
The director and costuming department for this movie could have played with textures like ruffles, lawn, worsted, embroidery, etc. Different shades of white and black, varying saturation levels on purple aside from that “washed 100 times” gown we see above, etc.
Sad and derpy and just….SIGH.
One of the many things I appreciate about the 1995 version is the humor; the “VIPER IN MY BOSOM!” scene is a perfect example. This just looks meh. :)
The
My biggest beef is with the director, for saying “I’m a little bit sick of the sort of fetishization of that time period, and this idea that everybody spent, like, seven hours doing their hair and makeup, and everything was always pristine, and somebody was always waiting to help you out of your dress or whatever. I’m not a historian, but I don’t buy all of it.” There are so many things wrong with her statements!! Oh and in that Vogue shoot, Daisy’s got stays on backwards 🙄🙄
The stringy hair, drab colors for everything and awful weird caps are going to be hugely distracting.
The loose stringy hair is also extremely inaccurate to Elinor’s character, whose emotionally closed off personality is extremely pit together at all times, to her detriment! This version looks like a farm girl coming from the countryside for the 1st time.
Put together, sorry!
I so, so agree, except that the farm girl would probably know to put her hair up and a cap on top of it.
Comments like that kill me because Regency era hair/ dress isn’t even that hard to do, as you can tell because there are tons of reenactors on YouTube who show you how to do it!
I don’t get it, if you don’t understand or even like the regency era, then why the eff would you make this movie? Just why???
Austen is a money maker, I guess, as are the Brontes. As always, I wish younger directors would take their so-called visions elsewhere, and try something more original; Jane and Anne and Charlotte and Emily are great, but they’re not the only British novelists who ever lived.
Oh dear… here we go again. I only needed to look at first photo and knew where we are heading.
Sad, boring, , unimaginative, pandering to the modern esteatics of quiet luxury.
I wonder when the history looks back on the 2020s period dramas and will judge it as one of the worst years when it comes to any effort of historical accuracy.
If Elinor and Marianne turned up anywhere rocking this disheveled look they would not be welcomed in polite society ever again.
well, this decade DID give us the 2020 Emma, so all is not lost!
I’m sorry but I don’t care for the costumes in this production.
Was Mrs. Dashwood a literal Puritan and I just somehow missed that in the book?
the caps remind me of growing up Catholic and if we forgot our hats for Mass, we’d pin a hanky on our heads. same vibe.
Head doily, as one of my friends says.
The word for this entire mess is “dour”. Bad lighting, bad hair, bad costumes, no color, sad sets and all around just a mess of greige and mudd. Dour.
I have a lot of thoughts, but to keep it short, let’s just say I won’t be surprised if there’s a porcine cameo in this one
I wonder if this kind of filmmaker thinks that the Dashwoods would not have servants? Because of course they would! They may have been in reduced circumstances but they would have had servants. Servants were the equivalent of today’s labor saving machines. They were of the gentry class and would not be cooking and cleaning. If they needed someone to help them into their dresses, they would have found someone – neglecting the fact that they were sisters and could help each other with the less complicated regency dresses. And they, like every other female in Great Britain (and Europe and America!) would have known how to “put up” their hair, as a decent woman would need to know.
There’s so much that’s so wrong here. And although her age is about right for the time period, I’m having as issue with Caitriona Balfe as Mrs Dashwood, in that I’m so used to her as Claire Fraser, and Claire’s hatred of caps/bonnets from the original Outlander novels. The images of Cait are making me laugh, and not just at the headgear. I’m getting some serious Emma Hamilton vibes from the image with the headwrap and half up half down do. But prior to her marriage, Emma and her attitudes, well – she wasn’t exactly known for her wholesome reputation like a proper Dashwood lady would be known. This treatment of period hair/clothing just strikes me as pure laziness along with pandering to an ignorant audience. In the “golden” age of Hollywood, period actresses had to have contemporary makeup and hair. Now they just have to look sloppy. Why bother?
Doesn’t help that Catriona Balfe is 18 years older than Daisy Edgar Jones (Elinor) and 20 years older than Esme Creed Miles (Marianne) meaning she would have been a very young bride and mother.
I wonder if they will have a pig in the house?
Is there some kind of conspiracy among modern directors to turn Austen into a Bronte?
Did their half-brother steal all their clothes too?
Boring. It’s like the instructions were to make it dull. They all look like servants or something…
I’m sure I can’t get into this version….nothing beats the Sense and Sensibility movie with Alarn Rickman and Kate Winslet…it’s perfect in every way. Just looking at the clothes in your post makes it seem so dreary; I’m sure it’ll be dreary to watch as well.
This looks grim. I think I’ll pass.
God, what a waste of George Mackay, he was PHENOMENAL in 1917.
He does have a splendid example of Period Drama Face – it’s hard to pin him down to any specific era other than ‘Not quite modern’.
Meanwhile that chap in the late Georgian topper next to the blonde young lady looks as though the casting director decided they were through with running themselves ragged to find properly Georgian faces in our 21st Century and would just have to invent Time Travel.
Really, I can intellectually accept the actor probably wasn’t press-ganged from the Eighteenth century, but if he was then his face does an excellent job of convincing me otherwise!
HARD agree with this.
I am totally fed up with uglification of the past fashion. Drab colours, sad sack outfits, derpy caps and almost everyone looks like they need an urgent meeting with soap and hot water. WHY??? WHY AGAIN???
GOD: “Somebody decided the Book of Job needed a sequel so I’ve decided to warm up by tormenting fans of Truth & Beauty.
Did they lose the ability to dye fabric after France had its Revolution?
Quaker’s influence, maybe.
Might be projecting something to do with conscientious objection of the present world stage?
Don’t know why, it seems that way to me.
Quaker’s influence, maybe.
Might be projecting something to do with conscientious objection of the present world stage?
Don’t know why, it seems that way to me.
I guess the younger Mr. Dashwood stole all the hairpins, as well as hogging the inheritance?
I’ve heard defenses of this aesthetic in terms of filmmaking, but I still think it sucks. THERE WAS COLOR, PEOPLE!! I mean, look at S&S 1995. So much color and you can SEE THINGS. Yes, I know natural lighting, blah, blah, blah but this is a FILM. We need to see these sad sacks of gowns at the very least!
This is the Austen cheat code when you don’t like Regency fashion “Let’s set it in the 1790s!!” Same song and dance with P&P 2005.