Sense and Sensibility. - movie reviews

National Review, Jan 29, 1996 by John Simon

Though Sense and Sensibility is not Jane Austen's best work, the screenplay that Emma Thompson drew from it, and the film that Ang Lee directed, capture the essence of the novel. There may be fewer earthy details here than in the recent Persuasion, but neither are there any obvious anachronisms. The broadening of certain effects is, like the foreshortening necessitated by the film format, unavoidable. The film is one of the prettiest in a long time, thanks to the exquisite production design of Luciana Arrighi, nicely judged costuming of Jenny Beavan and John Bright, authentic period movement by Jane Gibson, and rapturous cinematography by Michael Coulter. The film truly looks right.

It also plays right. The Dashwood sisters may be more mature than stipulated, but "sense" is staunchly embodied by Miss Thompson's Elinor, and "sensibility" is impassionedly conveyed by Kate Winslet's Marianne. The very shapes of the actresses' faces and figures -- Miss Thompson's ovals and elongations, Miss Winslet's fiercely compact rotundities -- work as objective correlatives. Emilie Francois is enchantingly saucy as little Margaret, and Imogen Stubbs a wonderfully sanctimonious Lucy. Harriet Walter pulls out a few too many stops as the mean Fanny, but it pays off in her hilarious fight scene with Lucy.

The men are mostly fine, too. Alan Rickman, better suited to heavies, nevertheless awkwardly grows on you as a repressed Colonel Brandon. Greg Wise is all dashing recklessness as Willoughby, and Hugh Laurie a splendidly wry Mr. Palmer. Only Hugh Grant is much too adorably bumbling as Edward Ferrars; perhaps his offscreen misadventure may have added to his apologetic stance. He urgently needs to chasten his onscreen persona, and stop hunching his shoulders like a dromedary.

The riskiest move may have been picking Ang Lee, the young Taiwanese director of The Wedding Banquet, to shepherd so Occidental a venture, but East and West meet as never the twain have before. Add to this felicitous indoor and outdoor locations, and sparse but telling music by Patrick Doyle, and you have all the needed ingredients. Walter Allen has said of Jane Austen that "the main emphasis in her work is on manners, which she sees as morals in microcosm." This is an impeccably mannerly transposition to the cinematic medium.

And there is the amazing acting by our scenarist. Miss Thompson has been remarkable in most of her many films, but -- improbably -- she keeps getting better yet. Just when you think she has reached her acme, she goes ahead and tops herself. The scene at the end when Elinor, who believes she has lost Edward forever, finds him come back to woo her is simply unsurpassable. It requires the actress to sob and exult simultaneously -- to release antithetical emotions in one long, liberating outburst, and what Miss Thompson does with it makes histrionic history. The distinguished scholar W. P. Ker once observed, "There is no name for the dominant quality in Miss Austen's work, except perhaps intelligence." This applies equally to Emma Thompson.

COPYRIGHT 1996 National Review, Inc.

FILM REVIEW; In Mannerly Search of Marriageable Men

By JANET MASLIN, The New York Times.

Published: December 13, 1995, Wednesday

In a banner year for movie-business mergers, one of the best-conceived collaborations takes place not in the board room but on the screen. The grandly entertaining "Sense and Sensibility" brings together Hollywood's new posthumous darling, Jane Austen, with Ang Lee, the director whose "Eat Drink Man Woman" had the irresistible good sense to combine Austen-like acuity with Chinese food.

Add to this inspired mix a team of production (Luciana Arrighi) and costume (Jenny Beavan and John Bright) designers who earned their tastefully muted stripes with Merchant-Ivory. They account for such charming distractions as carefully appointed country houses, bucolic flocks of sheep and custom-made parchment used for the will, ledgers and love letters that are so vital to this story. Also add Emma Thompson, who proves as crisp and indispensably clever a screenwriter as she is a leading lady. And Hugh Grant, as one of those genteel heartthrobs whose amiability and financial prospects can keep Miss Austen's heroines occupied throughout an entire book's worth of small talk.

The talk in this, the author's first published novel, is a shade less subtle and more achingly polite than the more rueful, sophisticated dialogue of her later work. And this film can't match the brilliant incisiveness of the more spartan "Persuasion," still the most thoughtful new Austen adaptation. But Mr. Lee is after something more broadly accessible, a sparkling, colorful and utterly contemporary comedy of manners. He achieves this so pleasantly that "Sense and Sensibility" matches the Austen-based "Clueless" for sheer fun. Not bad, considering that these characters respond to any awkward social circumstance by talking about the weather.

But Mr. Lee and Ms. Thompson are not above winking at their audience over such musty, Regency-era conventions. Nor are they overly reverential about the text itself, which has been artfully pruned and sometimes modified to suit broader comic tastes. While it's not necessary to have John Dashwood (James Fleet) twitching so nervously at his father's deathbed, wincing over a promise to take financial care of his stepmother and half sisters, Mr. Lee often indulges in such bold strokes. In this case, it's as helpful a way as any of setting the story in motion.

Once John's wife, Fanny (Harriet Walter), has overruled her milquetoast husband on any show of generosity, the Dashwood women are left to navigate shark-infested waters in their search for marriageable men. With the wonderfully self-possessed Ms. Thompson and Kate Winslet, another spirited and striking actress, playing these women, "Sense and Sensibility" needs no further outcry over the injustice of their plight. But it finds one anyway, in typically quick and sprightly style, with the youngest Dashwood daughter hiding in a treehouse. "Because houses go from father to son, dearest, not from father to daughter," says Elinor (Ms. Thompson), by way of explaining to little Margaret why the Dashwood women are being forced to leave their home. Margaret stays hidden, but she yanks up the treehouse ladder to show what she thinks of inheritance laws like that.

It doesn't take long for the older Dashwood girls (teen-agers in Austen's version, but played gracefully and convincingly by more mature actresses) to attract enough suitors for a Harlequin romance. The most comically swashbuckling of these is John Willoughby (Greg Wise), whose matinee-idol qualities are treated as a source of amusement. He rescues Marianne from a rainstorm with an elan worthy of Gothic romance, and he never goes anywhere without a volume of Shakespeare's sonnets. (That marks one of Ms. Thompson's more felicitous changes; Austen's Willoughby admires William Cowper and Sir Walter Scott.)

When Marianne falls impetuously for Willoughby, the story underscores the dichotomy of the title. Marianne is the more passionate and impulsive of the two sisters, while Elinor has the greater composure and the more level head. Elinor's good sense guides her through a flirtation with Edward Ferrars, written as a decent but dull fellow and played with cheerfully incongruous "Four Weddings and a Funeral"-isms by Mr. Grant. Whatever this costs the film in terms of authenticity, it contributes obvious and welcome verve. And Mr. Grant, despite some overused fluttering and stammering, rises touchingly to the film's most straightforward and meaningful encounters.

Alan Rickman at first appears miscast as the oldest, most pained of the Dashwood girls' suitors. Overlooked at first, he lingers to remind audiences that in Austen's novels, patience and decency make for a winning hand. Surely that accounts for much of the author's current cinematic popularity, since it stands in contrast with so much of what Hollywood has offered lately. Here's a film in which sense and intelligence not only prevail but also create the most gratifying of happy endings.

In addition to emerging as the movies' most welcome new moralist, Jane Austen has also begun looking like the patron saint of supporting casts. Filling out the book's wealth of tartly etched secondary figures are Elizabeth Spriggs as an uproariously blunt matron, Gemma Jones as the Dashwood girls' gentle mother, Imogen Stubbs as the sweet young thing who slyly bedevils Elinor over Edward's attentions, and Robert Hardy as the country squire who assesses most issues in terms of money and hounds.

Hugh Laurie plays another of Austen's more memorable minor figures, the acerbic husband who buries himself in his newspaper except when making lacerating wisecracks. We need no further proof that this material is ageless.

"Sense and Sensibility" is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It includes no profanity stronger than " 'pon my word" and no noticeable moments that would disturb children.

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY Directed by Ang Lee; written by Emma Thompson, based on the novel by Jane Austen; director of photography, Michael Coulter; edited by Tim Squyres; music by Patrick Doyle; production designer, Luciana Arrighi; produced by Lindsay Doran; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 135 minutes. This film is rated PG.

WITH: Emma Thompson (Elinor Dashwood), Alan Rickman (Colonel Brandon), Kate Winslet (Marianne Dashwood), Hugh Grant (Edward Ferrars) and Gemma Jones (Mrs. Dashwood).

Austen's maestro; Sense And Sensibility - Emma's in the driving seat.

From: The Mirror (London, England) | Date: February 22, 1996 | Author: Rose, Simon

MILLIONS of Jane Austen lovers fell head-over-heels with the telly version of Pride And Prejudice. Now her novel Sense And Sensibility hits the big screen - and this, too, is a splendid costume drama.

Like Pride, Sense And Sensibility - which was written for the screen by Britain's renaissance woman Emma Thompson - takes a magnifying glass to love, money and status in England in the late 18th century.

When Papa dies and Mrs Dashwood (Gemma Jones) and her daughters are kicked out of their home by some snooty relatives, mum knows that marrying money is the best hope for her now impoverished offspring.

But we all know what can happen to even the best-laid plans.

Take Marianne (Kate Winslet), the most eligible of the girls. She thinks love more important than loot.

Debonair

She abandons the prim and proper Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman) for the dashing, debonair but decidedly dodgy Willoughby (Greg Wise) who rescues her when she twists her ankle.

Meanwhile budding curate Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant) falls for Elinor (Thompson) - and then disappears. What's a girl to do?

Sense And Sensibility, which was directed by Taiwanese Ang Lee, has been nominated for seven Oscars.

But while Thompson and Winslet entirely deserve their acting nominations, it's fair to say that no one in the cast puts a foot wrong.

Every performance is beautifully drawn, with Grant and Rickman particularly wonderful. Hugh Laurie, too, shines in a hilarious cameo as a browbeaten husband.

The lavish sets, costumes and houses in this movie are utterly ravishing, but what makes it truly wonderful is Thompson's winning script.

Oozing wit, vitality, charm and even sensuality, this is cinema at its most delicious.

The only sour note is the fact that a film so thoroughly British should have been financed by the Americans.

COPYRIGHT 1996 MGN LTD

Article about Emma Thompson

EMMA'S ALL LOVED UP; ALTHOUGH HER CAREER HAS BEEN A GREAT SUCCESS, WINNING TWO OSCARS ALONG THE WAY, EMMA THOMPSON'S PRIVATE LIFE HAS BEEN BLIGHTED BY HEARTBREAK. NOW, AT LAST, SHE'S FOUND TRUE HAPPINESS.

BY JOHN HISCOCK. The Mirror (London, England) November 21, 2003

Her troubled private life has been as well-documented as her professional successes. And it seems that for every accolade, Emma Thompson has suffered a major personal trauma including divorce and a tragic miscarriage.

But with the birth of her daughter, and her wedding to fellow actor Greg Wise in July, she has at last found true happiness.

Appearing in the new Richard Curtis film Love Actually, Emma may be a double Oscar-winning actress, but it wasn't until she became a mother to Gaia, now three, that she discovered her perfect role.

"It was very difficult for me to have a child," says Emma, 44. "That's why I had one so late, because I had a miscarriage and things. Gaia was IVF and it's the best thing I've ever done.

"For me, having a child was an everyday miracle that transformed the landscape as completely as death transforms it, and it was just as profound an experience, which was the only thing I had to compare it with.

"It's extraordinary. It's like a meteor hitting your world. Nothing's ever the same again and there's this bloody great crater of motherhood out of which you are never going to climb and it's fabulous. It's the best thing."

Thompson exudes exhilaration and enthusiasm as she talks animatedly about how Gaia and Greg have transformed her life. She and Greg were married on July 29 in a quiet ceremony in Scotland after he had gone down on his knees and proposed on the Academia Bridge in Venice on Valentine's Day.

"It was partly for Gaia because, oddly enough, I think children appreciate it when you're married," she says. "They like being there, too. She had a great time.

"Greg is the most decent person I think I've ever known. He is kind to the root of his being and I've watched him over the years being kind to people and I think I admire that most of all. I don't think I could live with someone who wasn't kind because it is a necessary way to behave at all times, if possible.

"So, if you're going to have a child, then have a child with somebody whose moral grid you share. The time at which you both want to go to bed is also important. We both like going bed at about half-past eight - with a book," she adds, laughing.

"The thing I've learned most is how to be patient because it's fantastically irritating living with children. I'm sorry, but you cannot romanticise it. It's very repetitive and terribly difficult at times, as well as being almost a religious experience on other occasions.

"My child teaches me everything about being human. People say that children can be cunning or naughty, but I don't really think they can. I think that children are remarkable, incredibly balanced, unbelievably just and extraordinarily kind. And if you can preserve that, then they are liable to grow into people that have some sort of chance of being fully human. You just have to try not to interfere too much and allow their humanising influence on you to take its course."

Thompson can be funny, serious and thoughtful almost all at the same time, and she is always stimulating and invigorating. Wearing beige tweed trousers with a brown jacket, she looks 10 years younger than her age, although she jokes that she's been up since 6.30am making herself up.

"My mum saw me going off this morning," says Emma, "and she looked at me and said, 'Good grief, how long did it take you to get looking like that?'"

Fearlessly outspoken and refreshingly down-to-earth, Emma studied English Literature at Cambridge where she dated actor Hugh Laurie. In August 1989, she married Kenneth Branagh and they became known as acting's golden couple, until they divorced in 1995 when he left her for Helena Bonham Carter.

The daughter of the late stage director Eric Thompson and actress Phyllida Law, Emma was involved in theatrical productions while at university and, on leaving, worked with Laurie and Stephen Fry on the television show Alfresco.

She co-starred opposite Robert Lindsay in the West End musical Me And My Girl and then worked with Branagh in the television mini-series Fortunes Of War, on stage in Look Back In Anger and in the film Henry V.

She became an international star thanks to James Ivory's Howards End, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar in 1992. The following year she received two more nominations, for The Remains Of The Day and In The Name Of The Father. Then, in 1995, she won another Oscar for her script for Sense And Sensibility and another acting nomination.

Thompson enlarged her following in America by spoofing her image on the comedy show Ellen, playing a lesbian British actress, and earned Emmy nominations for co-writing and acting in the television production of Wit, playing a college professor stricken with cancer.

She is now back at work having taken nearly four years off and this week appears in Love Actually alongside Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, Bill Nighy and Colin Firth. Emma plays the sister of Grant's Prime Minister. The film's narrative interweaves and concludes in London on Christmas Eve, although the festive season is something Thompson can't abide.

"Christmas is such a commercialised, horrendous, bastardised festival in this country," she says, despairingly. "Once October arrives, you go to Selfridges and all the Christmas decorations will be up. By the time it gets to Christmas, everybody will be so fed up.

"But I think it depends on what you experience yourself and, as a child, Christmas for me was a very loving time. I personally think that a festival which should be about love has been stolen from us, partly because of the passing of the Christian notion of it and the fact that now it's all just about what we can buy and sell."

In a move which will no doubt delight her daughter when she's a bit older, Emma has signed up for Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban - due out next year - playing Professor Sybill Trelawney, the Professor Of Divination.

"I get to wear huge googly glasses," says Emma gleefully. "I also have a nervous breakdown and get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty bottle of sherry. Gaia is not quite into Harry Potter yet, but of course I am doing it for her so that later she will be impressed. I don't know how old she will be, but if she only watches Howards End she will say, 'Mum, it's so boring!'"

Emma has also succeeded in raising the finance for a children's film she has written called Nanny McPhee, a kind of modern-day Mary Poppins, which is due to go into production next March.

"It's about seven children who have a widowed father and they're all terribly, fantastically naughty," she says. "Then, a nanny arrives who is very strange to look at but, as she helps them organise themselves, she gets prettier. It's about learning how to be human, really."

But not all of Emma's projects are so full of sweetness and light. A lot of what she does has a heavy political slant and she is still trying to come to terms with the reaction accorded Imagining Argentina, a film close to her heart about the disappearance of thousands of people under Argentina's military dictatorship in the '70s.

She starred alongside Antonio Banderas and the movie drew jeers at this year's Venice Film Festival. Its mixture of graphic brutality and dreamy magic led to it being slaughtered by the critics and made it one of the worst-received films in the event's history.

"I was astonished at the reaction to it," Thompson admits. "The critics all took the same line - that you can't tell a story in this way. Then we had the public who got up and clapped for six minutes, which doesn't happen very often in Venice. So I thought OK, we've got something here that has hit a nerve with the press."

Emma has continued to promote Imagining Argentina, despite the reaction it got at Venice. "I've been showing it to other people, to Amnesty International, other human rights groups and to Argentinians. They said they didn't understand what had happened in Venice that night.

"I've been trying to work it out and I think there was a nervousness to it because it is a very difficult story to tell, but if we don't tell these stories, they happen again. I completely support the film and will carry on supporting it because I absolutely believe in it."

Emma is also writing a screenplay about the 1973 murder of Chilean political activist and songwriter Victor Jara following the overthrow of the Allende government. Her own activism and concern has also led to a role alongside Meryl Streep and Al Pacino in the American television play Angels In America, about the spread of Aids.

"It addresses the problem of disease, how people respond to it and how to be human," she says. "I was in Mozambique earlier this year during an Aids trip and it was just extraordinary how much support and love there is in places where there is very little else. You find that in extremely barren places love still flourishes.

"There is love everywhere."

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