Austen returns after three decades

The Dashwood sisters are hitting the big screen for the first time in thirty years. Director Georgia Oakley and Australian screenwriter Diana Reid have adapted Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, first published in eighteen eleven.

Making Austen speak to TikTok generation

Daisy Edgar-Jones, who plays Elinor Dashwood, says director Oakley brings immediacy and freshness to the period drama. The film feels bedded in the classic yet makes these women feel like they exist today.

“there is an immediacy and a freshness to [Oakley's] filmmaking that makes these women feel like they exist today”

Sisters without an estate

Set in the late eighteenth century, the story follows Elinor and her younger sister Marianne after their father dies unexpectedly.Left without an estate, they face an impoverished future unless they marry to secure their station.

Exploring what Austen left to mine

Edgar-Jones felt the weight of adapting a beloved classic. She says brilliant literature like Austen's needs exploring repeatedly because there is so much to mine and dig from the writing.

“Writing like Austen's needs to be explored time and time again because there's so much to mine and dig”

Sisterhood at the heart

Oakley and Reid emphasise the bonds between Elinor, Marianne, and their younger sister Margaret. By the film's end, Elinor learns to tap into her wilder, messier emotional side while the sisters' arcs cross in a…

Modern romance in period dress

Edgar-Jones says the Dashwood sisters experience modern phenomena like love-bombing and ghosting. Austen explored the female experience and dynamics of romance two hundred years ago, yet people still experience love much the same way.

Why Austen endures

Edgar-Jones credits the quality of Austen's writing for why her books are continually explored and form the kernel of many rom-coms and romances watched today. Sense and Sensibility is now in Australian cinemas.