‘Sense and Sensibility’ review: Jane Austen romance is weirdly gloomy and depressing

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“Sense and Sensibility”? More like doom and gloom.

Jane Austen’s 1811 story always begins with a death — that of Henry Dashwood, the dad of Elinor, Marianne and Margaret. But downer director Georgia Oakley has decided to keep the funeral going right till the end of her overwhelmingly dark and dreary take that doesn’t offer much in the way of sweeping romance.

Just what people go to Jane Austen for — depression!

That’s a valid enough angle, I suppose. The Dashwood girls are hurt more often than they are happy. Men take and take and take from them. The family at the story’s center is booted from their cherished home and is forced to pack into a cramped cottage. Not quite the fancy-free paradise of their vast Norland estate, which they get evicted from after the patriarch kicks the bucket. Without the expected Austenian ravishment, though, and drained of color like a Soviet prison, “Sense and Sensibility” becomes a drag.

Oakley’s off-putting, dour version couldn’t be more different than Ang Lee’s sublime 1995 adaptation starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman that’s still considered one of the best Austen films ever. That movie included the same painful dramas and no-good dudes, only with a through-line of lightness, optimism and pleasant perseverance.

Most importantly, we cared about the people in it.

Yet here there is no relationship here worth getting invested in. The always excellent Daisy Edgar-Jones is best as the uber-serious Elinor, the eldest daughter who falls for dashing Edward Ferrars (George MacKay) because of his gentle nature and his dream of a simple life in the country. But these actors barely crack a smile, which is something I hear one generally does when in love.

Edgar-Jones is well-known for the miniseries “Normal People,” about a pair of anguished and oft-naked Irish lovers, and she and Oakley bring that same tanker-heavy baggage (if not the ample nudity) to 19th century England where nobody wants it. MacKay has similar trouble. He looks just as shell-shocked here as he did in the trenches of “1917.”  

And what of free-spirited Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) and jovial John Willoughby (Frank Dillane)? Creed-Miles is too contemporary in a dull, magic-free way to make the middle sister interesting, despite trying to juice the character’s rebel quality by covering her in dirt from her forest adventures.

As her charismatic beau Willoughby, Dillane plays up the sleaze from the start. He’s far from a catch. And to date him, let alone marry him, seems like an awfully bad idea. I can’t remember ever watching a Jane Austen movie and thinking, “She’s actually into that guy?”

And Herbert Nordrum’s Colonel Brandon is rather like if Keanu Reeves came down with laryngitis.

The moody actors are not helped by Roger Goula’s score of sinister strings that would be better suited to a coven of witches than young, single women on the prowl for a man.

And the film’s look fights against feeling.

Oakley and cinematographer Arnaud Potier frequently opt for an annoying shaky camera technique, probably to update the tone from the dominant (and much prettier) 1990s Austen aesthetic. In fact, this entire movie is obsessively concerned with being made in 2026 and separating itself from the Ang Lee film, even if that means looking as though it was filmed in the bowels of an old ship during a hurricane.

At times, though, the screen jostles so much it takes the viewer out of the scene. You start imagining some poor guy being forced to hold the camera like maracas. The “sense” of the title is certainly not vision.

Nobody is horrible, just wrongly assembled. Caitríona Balfe recedes into the many shadows as mom Mrs. Dashwood, and Fiona Shaw’s gregariousness as Mrs. Jennings crosses into overacting.

What a shame. “Sense and Sensibility” is a story of memorable characters in which every role, big or small, can stand out. But “Sense and Sensibility” is a movie in which almost no one does.