365 Days. 365 Films.

When Mr Dashwood dies he leaves his wife and her daughters poor and alone by leaving all of his assets to his son from his first marriage. Three daughters Marianne, Elinor and Margaret (Winslet, Thompson and François) struggle to cope as they move in with a relative and try to marry themselves back into a wealthy family.

Austen’s original story has been handled well with great detail to the subtlest of characteristics with Marianne and Elinor in particular. These things can partly be accredited to Winslet for her stunning and in depth performance in a fairly early stage of her movie career, but Thompson is mainly to thank for the genius of this film as she also wrote the screenplay adaptation. Ang Lee’s direction is also perfectly subtle and classic and, combined with a beautiful score by Patrick Doyle, this truly is a film to remember.

The casting was perhaps a little off — I wouldn’t have expected Hugh Grant to appear as anyone in this film, never mind as Edward Ferrars. His nervous and slightly geeky acting style is charming in a fluffy romantic comedy, but this is one of the greatest novels ever written, and quite a complex character. His style didn’t play well in this film because he can apparently do nothing else, but it wasn’t something which bugged me for the whole film, and certainly not enough to ruin the brilliance of the acting from Winslet and Thompson.