`Sense and Sensibility'' is not another stuffy literary adaptation. It's an exuberant, well- crafted film that gets the audience involved on a gut level even before the opening credits are over.
The picture is about the problems of a widow and her daughters 200 years ago. Do you really care if the family can get by on 500 pounds a year? Do you really care if Mom's eldest daughters don't marry well?

　　 Yes, you do. There's an urgency about ``Sense and Sensibility'' that keeps the pedestrian problems of an unremarkable 18th century family immediate and personal.

　　 The film, which opens today, is about love and money, high-stakes issues in anybody's life. But in the lives of the young women here, they are the only issues. Marriage is their one avenue to power, romance and adventure. It's the first and last move they'll make in which they have any semblance of autonomy. The film follows the romantic paths of two sisters of marrying age, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Elinor (Emma Thompson) is the circumspect older sister, who is ruled more by her ``sense'' than her ``sensibility.'' She is cautious, responsible, realistic. Her sister Marianne (Kate Winslet), by contrast, is all sensibility -- passionate and impulsive.

　　 ``Sense and Sensibility'' builds a rooting interest early by confronting us with sneaky, selfish people who stand as impediments to love -- and the kind, intelligent Dashwoods, who are on a genuine journey of the heart.

　　 The Dashwoods' journey is complicated in the film's first mo ments when they lose both their inheritance and their dowries. Their father dies, and by law his estate passes to his eldest son by a previous marriage. Overnight, his widow and her three daughters -- the youngest is Margaret (Emilie Francois), a 12-year-old tomboy -- are dispossessed.

　　 It's the kind of cruel situation that grabs an audience at the start. The Dashwoods become poor relations in their own home, under the thumb of their half-brother and his icy, sharp-voiced wife, Fanny (Harriet Walter).

　　 It seems things can only get more unbearable when Fanny announces that her brother, Edward, will be coming to visit. But Edward turns out to be none other than kindly, tousled-haired Hugh Grant, who blows into the film like a warm breeze.

　　 In recent months it has become easy to forget what it was about Grant that people liked so much a year ago. But Grant is adorable in ``Sense and Sensibility'' -- shy and stammering (of course), wincing with discomfort, walking as though balancing a weight on his shoulders,英语影评 and looking at people with sensitivity and care. Everything about him is tentative, and then the smile comes and puts all his uncomfortable mannerisms into harmony.

　　 It's inevitable that mild Edward and sincere Elinor should hit it off, but of course they're separated before a romance is under way. The focus shifts to Marianne, who doesn't want just another nice guy but a blazing passion.

　　 Thompson adapted the screenplay from Jane Austen's novel over several years. She does a wonderful job of letting the audience understand the political nature of these courtships.

　　 At the same time, even the most sedate situations are grounded in deep feeling. When Marianne's suitor, the shy and haunted Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman), brings her flowers, we know that behind the gesture is a whole tragic history. Likewise when the dash ing but too-good-to-be-true Willoughby (Greg Wise) shows up, we recognize in him all of Marianne's romantic projections.

　　 Winslet, who was brilliant as one of the young murderesses in ``Heavenly Creatures,'' is equally good here, showing the move from girlish impetuousness to a more womanly sense of balance. And Thompson is at her best, relying not on charm but on subtle and heartfelt emotion. The scene in which the dam finally breaks and Elinor's emotions come pouring out is naked and powerful.

　　 Taiwanese director Ang Lee (``Eat Drink Man Woman,'' ``The Wedding Banquet'') might at first seem an unlikely choice to direct an adaptation from English literature. But he does it with the right balance of irony and warmth. The result is a film of great understanding and emotional clarity, filmed with an elegance that never calls attention to itself.