Now [Frances O'Connor] has made a really impressive debut as a writer and director with this study of Emily Brontë, intelligently played by the Franco-British star Emma Mackey. It’s beautifully acted, lovingly shot, fervently and speculatively imagined, although Mackey’s portrayal, excellent as it is, may be smoother around the edges and less windblown than the real thing.This is a sensually imaginative dive into the life of the Wuthering Heights author: it is a real passion project for O’Connor, with some wonderfully arresting insights. The film conforms to time-honoured biopic tradition by starting with Emily on her deathbed, and a waspish, querulous final exchange with her sister Charlotte, played by Alexandra Dowling, whom the film mostly – and perhaps unfairly – sees as mean-minded and envious. Then we go back to her intense young womanhood at Haworth parsonage, under the care of her widower clergyman father Patrick (Adrian Dunbar) in the wild beauty of Yorkshire.The drama shows Emily’s creative path to writing her masterpiece as a matter of coming to terms with, and surmounting, the two great loves of her life. First is her brother Branwell (Fionn Whitehead), a witty and artistically inclined young man frittering away what minor talent he has with dissolute behaviour. And then there is William Weightman, high-minded assistant curate to Emily’s father, played here with saturnine handsomeness by Oliver Jackson-Cohen. Biographical evidence points to a possible platonic tendresse between William and Emily’s younger sister, Anne, (who doesn’t register much here). But O’Connor gives Emily and William a passionate sexual affair which brings William to the brink of madness and which is to be betrayed by Branwell, involving an ingenious, if elaborate, plot complication involving a letter.In real life, the small matter of contraception or the lack of it might have made itself felt in the case of Emily and William’s grand passion. (And incidentally, the published copy of Wuthering Heights which Emily finally holds in her hands would not have been credited to “Emily Brontë” but “Ellis Bell”, because of the patriarchal world of publishing.) But everything is presented here with conviction and Mackey and Jackson-Cohen are absolutely believable lovers; their sexuality carries the drama. You can imagine that Emily thought about it, at the very least. There is also a plausibly managed friendship between William and Branwell, and when the troubled brother goes missing and William goes looking for him, yelling “Bran … well!” across the landscape, O’Connor cleverly allows us to see how this might have inspired a famous fictional moment for Emily.Most strikingly of all, O’Connor expresses all of the sisters’ imaginative life in the mask that Patrick did own in real life, encouraging role-play games. Emily uses it to channel the spirit of their departed, longed-for mother; it is a disturbing, séance-like scene that hints at something unearthly and occult in her creativity and perhaps all creativity. Had he lived to see it, this is a movie scene that I think Yorkshireman Ted Hughes would have loved. It is a real achievement for O’Connor. (Peter Bradshaw)
How did Emily Brontë come to write Wuthering Heights? “I put pen to paper,” she says in Emily, a “speculative biopic” which manufactures origins for characters and events in that anguished novel. If audiences really were content with the pen-to-paper explanation, then the movie would have no reason to exist. Like Becoming Jane (Austen) and Miss Potter (Beatrix) before it, Emily is in the business of joining the dots between life and literature, reducing artistic inspiration to book-group talking points and dreamy what-ifs. But this debut feature from the actor-turned-director Frances O’Connor still contains striking material amid the poppycock, and even ’fesses up to its own futility.Here is the younger Emily being taunted by Charlotte (“Do you know what they call you? The strange one!”), and here she is sitting in church as her father (Adrian Dunbar) delivers his sermon and introduces the dishy new curate, Mr Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). The sisters gaze up at him in the pulpit, looking less like part of a congregation than the swooning front row at a K-pop gig. [...]Branwell is a good egg despite his opium habit. So where might Heathcliff’s cruelty have stemmed from? Step forward Mr Weightman. One minute he’s giving Emily French lessons, the next he’s… well, giving her French lessons, only now he is whispering them softly as he humps her in front of the fire. From there it’s a few short weeks until he is gaslighting and slut-shaming her, and she is hammering at his door in the middle of the night, haunting him mortally much as Catherine will haunt Heathcliff from beyond the grave.This is every bit as literal-minded as it sounds, though O’Connor (who played Fanny Price in Patricia Rozema’s penetrating 1999 film of Mansfield Park) achieves some transformative effects in a string of scenes suggesting magic or illusion. In one gothic episode, Emily’s gift for immersive storytelling transforms an innocuous parlour game into a séance. In another, she bids goodbye to Branwell for the last time, embracing him through a white bedsheet hanging between them on the washing line. When she peers behind it, he has vanished. It is almost as if O’Connor is admitting in such moments that the whole concept behind her film is bunkum, and that the nebulous creative process can’t be rendered as inventory when it is closer to the supernatural.Perhaps that’s why she throws chronology to the wind. Brontë devotees will be staggered to learn that Branwell died before the publication of Wuthering Heights (he didn’t) or that Emily’s death inspired Charlotte to write Jane Eyre (it was in fact published two months before her younger sister’s book).O’Connor’s cast doesn’t let her down, even when her own script does. Mackey (star of Sex Education) and Whitehead (the main squaddie from Dunkirk) are sullen without being leaden; the scene in which Emily critiques Branwell’s writing, lacerating him with barbs she intends also for herself, sings with authentic pain. In the far smaller role of Anne, Gething delivers killer lines and looks to match. Glancing down at Charlotte, who is gnashing her teeth over Emily’s manuscript and cursing her gifted sister, Anne arches an eyebrow and observes tartly: “I see you finished it, then.” Talk about withering heights. (Ryan Gilbey)
The life of Emily Brontë is an enduring object of fascination. So small, the life, so sparse, so limited. Yet it delivered those magnificent poems and Wuthering Heights. How could this be? Genius, I suppose, paired with a vivid interior life. But as neither of those are cinematic, Emily imagines what could have led her to write as she did. It’s a ‘speculative biopic’, and modern, but there’s no Billie Eilish on the soundtrack or breaking of the fourth wall or jokey intertitles or any of those larks, which is a mighty relief. Instead, it’s daring, and ravishing. If you’d asked me if Emily might have ever tried opium, or had a passionate affair with a sexy curate, I’d have laughed in your face. But here I absolutely bought it. [...]The film opens with Emily, who died at 30, on her deathbed as her younger sister, Anne (Amelia Gething), is asking her: ‘How did you write it? How did you write Wuthering Heights? It’s an ugly book and base and full of selfish people.’ ‘Good,’ replies Emily. Anne doesn’t much figure in the film after this, but then Anne never much figures. (Poor Anne.)We spool back in time to when the parsonage at Haworth was populated by Emily, Anne, Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), Branwell (Fionn Whitehead), their father (Adrian Dunbar) and their aunt (Gemma Jones). Emily is the weirdest of the weird sisters, known in the village as ‘the strange one’. She’s a loner. She doesn’t mix. She feels alienated from her family but finds solace with them. She travels to Brussels, when it’s thought she will be a teacher, but almost immediately returns home. That’s as far she gets. Brussels. ‘I’m an odd fish,’ she says. ‘Take me away and I fade away.’ But she has her imagination, and the stories she makes up with her sisters – although Charlotte thinks they are too old for that now – and she has the moors, where she can run wild, sometimes as rain pours and thunder claps and the violin soundtrack by Abel Korzeniowski goes berserk. The film has madly Gothic moments, of course.Emily is closest to her brother, Branwell, who is always disgracing the family, one way or another. But he has the firmest grasp on what makes his sister tick, and how they are both restricted by convention. She discovers his opium stash and has a try. She is dispatched to fetch him from the pub and returns drunk herself. This sounds insane on paper – Emily Brontë, drunk! And high! – but set within the film’s internal logic it makes sense. She also falls passionately for William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a curate, but they are doomed, plus there is one of those letters that is read too late. Emily learns that love can be cruel, and violent, and vengeful, which will all be poured into the book Anne hates.This is presented as a series of vignettes, filmed mostly in natural light and with hand-held cameras so, while the times may have been constrained, the characters aren’t. There are some deliciously beautiful visual moments as well as some funny ones. (Emily bakes a very bad cake at one point.) And Mackey is superb, able to convey her bafflement at the world, as well as her deep attachment to it, with just a flicker of an eye or the set of her jaw. It is one of those films that is better than anyone can ever make it sound. (Deborah Ross)
For the most part it feels like the work of an accomplished director with plenty of competency on display and artistic flourishes to make this really stand out from other biopics of period dramas of its sort.The film feels refreshing, making wonderful use of the Yorkshire landscape that was such an important part of Emily’s life and her work. Nanu Segal captures the rugged beauty of the landscape in both its sun drenched glory and rain drenched darkness. The use of the rain and frequent night time sequences brings a gothic, chilly quality that seems fitting of Brontë’s work and the period in question.This is complemented wonderfully by Abel Korzeniowski’s brooding, baroque score that often leaves a haunting mark and helps the film navigate its transitions from an often very funny film to something more sombre and melancholic in its latter stages. It’s impressive for a first-time director to be able to balance the many elements of the film with such dexterity. [...]Emma Mackey really is a revelation here, a far cry from her role in Sex Education and showing a true versatility and star quality that mark her apart. She imbues Emily with an adventurous spirit but also sense of deep sadness and isolation and it is a joy to see her journey over the course of 2 hours wonderfully matched by Jackson-Cohen and Whitehead with smaller parts for Charlotte and Anne but both Dowling and Amelia Gething are up to the challenge.Emily is a sumptuous, visually arresting film that acts as a wonderful showcase for its cast, especially Emma Mackey who is truly electrifying. The baroque, gothic overtones seem fitting of the subject matter and era with some creative visuals and story beats proving Frances O’Connor a director to be reckoned with who clearly knows how to make a period drama that stands out from a packed crowd. (Chris Connor)
Emily es la otra cara de la moneda. La actriz Frances O'Connor firma el guion de esta película, la primera que dirige, que se mueve entre lo gótico y lo romántico. La joven Emily Brontë convive con su padre y sus hermanos Branwell, Charlotte y Anne. Tímida y reservada, Emily, que siente clavada la ausencia de su madre fallecida, sufre por los encontronazos con Charlotte y disfruta de la compañía del alocado y bebedor Branwell.Todos los hermanos tienen una imaginación desbocada y una vocación literaria, pero Emily se limita a escribir poemas y no se lanza a la novela hasta que vive una apasionada y desgraciada historia de amor con el nuevo párroco de la localidad que es también su profesor de francés. La interpretación de Emma Mackey como la joven Emily ha llamado la atención del público y quizá también la del jurado que el sábado dará a conocer los premios de este Festival de Sitges que incluyen uno a la mejor interpretación femenina. (Leonor Mayor Ortega) (Translation)
An adaptation of Wuthering Heights with a ‘modern edge’ is every English student’s worst nightmare. Nobody should tamper with Emily Brontë’s genius, and not many people in Cambridge theatre have dared. James Critchley took the plunge this term, and tamper with it he certainly did.While to strictly measure this production against the novel would be to miss the impact it can have, the production would, at times, certainly make Brontë turn in her grave. Critchley claimed this production is ‘heretical for Emily Brontë purists,’ however, the decision to refigure Heathcliff (Kitty Ford) as a woman did mean the production was given a shape of its own; incomparable to that of the novel itself. Emerging from the shadows of the moors, this reimagining of Cathy (Sarah Mulgrew) and Heathcliff’s romance as one of queer love reached new, unexplored, heights.This queer reimagining meant that major sources of conflict between Cathy and Heathcliff in the novel are informed by socio-economic issues and ones of sexuality too. Heathcliff’s claim that she ‘can’t give [Cathy] what [Linton] can’ becomes one imbued with sexual complications, in addition to those of Heathcliff’s social standing. The restraints and repressions that plague this epic love beg to be considered in a different light.Likewise, Cathy’s assertion that if she was ‘to forget’ Heathcliff she would ‘have to forget [herself]’ is riddled with queer complications. Cathy describes Heathcliff as ‘her soul’, and, in Critchley's production, her soul is now one challenged by heteronormative expectations.Kitty Ford's Heathcliff was appropriately animalistic and passionately portrayed; the shift of her relationship with Sarah Mulgrew’s Cathy from one of naive love to an intense and dark inseparability was effortless. The performance that has to be most highly commended was, however, Mark Jones’s portrayal of Edgar. It was arresting, it was hilarious, and it was brilliant to watch.The production seeks to impose a ‘modern edge’ on Brontë’s classic tale. Critchley claims the production sets the relationship against a ‘heteronormative social landscape that endeavours to contain difference’ and ‘assert a narrowly-defined sense of order.’ But, while this ‘heteronormative social landscape’ is undeniably inferred by the novel’s Victorian contexts, it’s never quite fully explored in the play’s modern scene.Although the lack of an overt acknowledgement concerning the changing of Heathcliff’s gender in the play makes this transition seamless, it meant that, at times, areas of potentially rich exploration were left unfulfilled. For example, Heathcliff and Hindley’s dynamic as one which is between a man and a woman, and as one where Heathcliff eventually owns and controls Hindley’s property, radically changes its impact. Yet, this being left unacknowledged meant the changing of Heathcliff’s gender, because it was so stunningly original, felt like it needed to be platformed in a production in and of itself.For Critchley, theatre should, however, ‘never provide the answers, only ever ask questions,’ and his production certainly does. Cathy and Heathcliff’s love in this production becomes revelatory; it changes the way one will subsequently consider this all-consuming relationship at its centre and Wuthering Heights as a whole. (Sophie Macdonald)
Playwright Jen Silverman is known for work that bends genre as much as it bends reality, and The Moors, now playing at Sebastopol’s Main Stage West through Oct. 23, is no exception. It’s a little Jane Eyre mixed with a little Hound of the Baskervilles, but it’s also a modern look at relationships, expectations and identity. [...]The actors all handle the existential absurdity well. Scarbrough brings a lot of believability to the neurotic sister. Reed is well grounded in the Brontë bad-boy trope. (Beulah F. Vega)
Gothic literature has a haunting feeling, more so than general horror, and tends to be claustrophobic and distorted. Female-centric Gothic novels, such as Jane Eyre, explore social horrors within a Gothic setting.In the novel, Jane is treated poorly and given few choices. Her reality, and that of many real women at the time, is that of misery. Passionate and independent, Jane is able to rise in social ranks by improving her Christian piety. The wife in the attic trope appears in Jane Eyre, with Bertha Rochester. Bertha is the mentally ill and abandoned wife of Mr. Rochester. Only after Bertha dies, and Jane agrees to marry a poor missionary, is Jane allowed to wed Mr. Rochester. Piety is the escape. According to Gothic literature, the horror of being a woman, being poor, or being unloved, could be solved with having good morals. This strict moral code of 19th century England continues to influence contemporary horror. (Courtney Rodgers)
MacDonald spent seven years working on Fayne, rambling around the Scottish Highlands with a van full of retired geologists and poring over the terrifying illustrations of historic medical textbooks. “I’m qualified as a late-nineteenth-century gynecologist now,” she jokes. Despite the classic Gothic trappings—a crumbling manor, ghostly apparitions, creepy aristocrats—Fayne is attuned to contemporary anxieties about gender and animated by MacDonald’s perpetual interest in the ways female ambition and queer sexuality are pathologized and controlled, often under the guise of love and protection. It’s an idea that’s captivated her since she was ten, when she picked up her older sister’s copy of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and became obsessed with the eponymous heroine. “There was no turning back,” MacDonald says, “I loved her journey. I loved that she was unquenchable, so passionate. It’s like, you can kill or crush me, but I will get through this, I will have love, I will tell my story.” (Michelle Cyca)
✨Hardy and Free✨
— Brontë Parsonage Museum (@BronteParsonage) October 12, 2022
ARTIST CALL OUT
We are excited to announce an open call to work with an artist on a special photography exhibition. They will capture the strength and freedom in both the landscapes of Yorkshire and the wonderful women that live here. pic.twitter.com/BOR83iKEn4
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