English director Georgia Oakley showcased a distinctive, naturalistic style — and her ability to translate a personal story into an original script — with her freshman feature, “Blue Jean.” The atmospheric drama followed a closeted physical ed teacher in Newcastle, navigating the introduction of Margaret Thatcher’s Section 28 anti-gay law. So a Regency period piece with an adapted screenplay already attached wasn’t the most expected choice for her second film. Yet the director delivers a fresh take on the Jane Austen classic “Sense and Sensibility” that fits seamlessly into her burgeoning oeuvre.
“I think it’s probably something to do with the fact that I love stories about outsiders,” Oakley told IndieWire, comparing Austen’s dispossessed Dashwoods to the protagonist of “Blue Jean,” whose fear about being outed and punished under the new law sends her into a self-alienating spiral. “I’m interested in characters that are living just on the edges of whatever is deemed to be the status quo of the time.”
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Oakley also gravitates to stories that use a strong narrative framework to explore social issues and subvert expectations. “The framework for this story is, obviously, the romance. But at the same time, she [Jane Austen] has smuggled in all of these subversive messages about the limitations of life as a woman. And I think I’m always drawn to stories where you’re taken on a journey, but at the same time, unpacking quite loaded and resonant themes.”
Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles as the central Dashwoods, sisters Elinor and Marianne, Oakley’s “Sense and Sensibility” is more stripped-down than its best-known predecessors, including Ang Lee’s beloved 1995 version with co-writer Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet. Though the new film, a collaboration between Working Title and Focus Features, is as faithful to the source text as any Austen lover could ask for — even those who might take issue with a softened Willoughby (“Urchin” star Frank Dillane) or a particularly self-serving Lucy Steele (Ceara Covene).
Oakley, who studied English literature at Newcastle University, has long been a fan of Austen’s first novel for its focus on the evolving relationship between the eldest sisters and, she said, for the “wildness to it.” Like screenwriter Diana Reid, Oakley wanted to foreground the “love story between the sisters,” rather than their respective romances. Unlike some recent adaptations of classic literature, though, she didn’t feel Austen’s narrative needed updating or packaging in a contemporary way to feel relevant.
“I really feel that Austen was writing about things that were so inherently contemporary that it didn’t need modernizing,” Oakley said, adding that while she wouldn’t generally classify herself as a “purist” when it comes to adaptations, she certainly leaned that way when it came to bringing “Sense and Sensibility” to the screen. “I don’t know if ‘purist’ is the right word, but there’s definitely something there in terms of not fixing what ain’t broke.”
“Diana wrote a screenplay where she retained, as much as possible, Austen’s actual language. She hasn’t tried to say, ‘We can only identify with these people if we bring them into the present.’ She’s said that the whole point is that we should be able to allow this story to wash over us, and to feel the connection with these characters in spite of our differences, rather than attempting to kind of close that gap. And I very much stand by that, as well,” she said. “Thematically, it [‘Sense and Sensibility’] speaks so much to what it means to be a young woman in today’s world without actually changing anything at all.”
Despite foregoing a contemporary lens, Oakley, like most filmmakers given a chance to make a big studio adaptation, didn’t shy away from casting actors well known to today’s moviegoing crowd. To round out the central cast, Oakley tapped the iconic Fiona Shaw as neighborly Mrs. Jennings, “Outlander” star Caitríona Balfe as Mrs. Dashwood, “Hamnet” breakout Bodhi Rae Breathnach as the youngest Dashwood sister, and English charmer George MacKay as Elinor’s gentle-souled love interest, Edward. And even without Edgar-Jones, who is quickly becoming one of Hollywood’s most bookable young female leads, that would have been plenty of star power to contend with.
Unlike what we’ve seen more often in recent adaptations, though, the heavy-hitting co-stars mostly disappear into their characters rather than make a spectacle of them, as the director intended. “I want the audience to kind of come at these characters with as little baggage as possible,” Oakley said, explaining that she was excited by the challenge of showcasing the film’s stars — and especially Edgar-Jones, who hasn’t done a British role in years — in a way that felt novel rather than distracting. “I want the audience to get to know the characters without just thinking, ‘This is that person.’”
But transforming her stars into believable Georgian protagonists wasn’t the only casting-related challenge that Oakley had to overcome to realize her version of “Sense and Sensibility.” Finding the perfect candidates for the period piece’s two major locations — Norland Park, the stately home the family must vacate after Mr. Dashwood dies, and Barton Cottage, the humble abode they relocate to in remote Devon — was just as essential. “The casting of those two locations felt as weighty and as important as the casting of the two sisters,” said Oakley, who was scouting properties along the rugged coastline of Cornwall, Dorset, and Devon even before a production designer was attached to the film.
Oakley’s focus on finding the perfect settings for her comedy of manners isn’t surprising, given what she achieved production-wise with “Blue Jean,” set in a small town in the North of England in 1988. The director — who took inspiration from a slew of paintings, as well as Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” and Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” — is methodical in her approach to using design elements to lend authenticity and shape her films’ aesthetics.
When the group came across the West Dorset estate that would serve as the Dashwood sisters’ childhood home, for example, Oakley was drawn to how the property inherently communicated a kind of history she wanted to echo in her portrayal of Norland Park. “It was kind of grand and impressive in the way that I wanted it to be, but it also had this kind of crumbling [look]. Like, even the pattern on the front of the stone was just kind of lived-in. And so it spoke to this naturalistic feeling that I was reaching for,” the director said.
“And there was actually a young family living in the house who had inherited it, so there was some overlap, in that they weren’t really sure what to do with it or how to look after it. They’d only been there a short time, and the wallpaper was peeling, and the carpets were fraying, and it felt loved as a house, but not particularly preserved. And that was exactly what I was looking for to tap into this feeling of everything being a little bit more intimate and relatable and human,” she added.
The stand-in for Barton Cottage, a single-room house in southern Devon more suited to livestock than people, didn’t come quite so ready-made — or with a roof. After production designer Francesca Di Mottola and her team finished transforming it, and the crew brought in a small herd of animals to dot the rounds, it had the quaint atmosphere of a place that, with enough love, could become a home. But unlike the many cottages along the coast that Oakley had scouted, it still felt isolated, befitting the story and essential to her portrayal of the Dashwoods in the latter part of the film.
As the story progresses, Oakley’s adaptation, which was shot in 35mm by cinematographer Arnaud Potier (“Dead Man’s Wire”), increasingly shows the maturing Dashwood daughters reading in the fields, performing outside work, and bringing elements from the natural world indoors as they turn the small cottage into a home. And that’s not just because the sisters’ outdoor scenes lend a dreamy quality to the film, with a palette you might use to paint a pastoral landscape. Oakley, who also cited Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” as a reference, felt the best way to tap into the inner lives of Austen’s young heroines was to place them in the elements.
“I did feel that it spoke to my memory of reading the book the first time. But also, I was really interested in the relationship between those young women and time and their own agency,” Oakley said, explaining that she spoke a lot with her collaborators about “what it feels like to sit in fields and wait for letters to arrive,” never knowing when or if they would.
“It’s unthinkable, almost, in today’s world — where we are bombarded with emails and updates and whatnot every five seconds — what it feels like to have time stretching out in front of you. And then, when you couple that with grief, and a family who just experienced such an enormous loss…,” she said, referring to how, while contending with the ups and downs of new romance, Elinor and Marianne are still mourning the death of their father. “I felt that nature was just going to say so much. It was going to kind of fill the spaces in terms of understanding the emotional landscape of the characters as things evolve, as the story evolves, as they move from place to place, as the seasons change.”
“Sense and Sensibility” opens in U.S. theaters from Focus Features on October 16.