Emily is truly a magnetic debut

Nouse reviews the film Emily.

Dear reader

Before you begin this review, I must confess something. I am a fan of the Brontës. Their works - with their swirling emotivity, breath-taking atmosphere and complex characterisations - have captured my heart before; as a result, I had high expectations for Frances O’Connor’s directorial debut, Emily (2022). And I was not disappointed in the least. If anything, I cannot wait to see what she does next.

I feel compelled to point out that Emily is not a biopic; at least, not in the same way that Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (2022) or even Andrew Dominik’s Blonde (2022) were. O’Connor is not interested in being faithful to Emily Brontë’s life beyond the fundamental elements of its timeline. We know about her father, brother and sisters; we know she died young, but lived fully; we know she wrote Wuthering Heights rather than having become a teacher or governess, and that’s about it. Everything else is from O’Connor’s imagination. Therefore, for once, the posters of this film are accurate in their description: Emily is ‘the imagination behind Wuthering Heights’. O’Connor is not interested in telling us about Emily Brontë. Rather, she uses her as a vessel to explore female creativity, female rage, female passion, female isolation, and mental illness.

By letting Emily run rampant through the Yorkshire countryside, O’Connor is more faithful to the legacy of the Brontë sisters, and Emily in particular, than she would have been had she tried to create a stuffy, domestic portrayal of her life. The whole point of the novels written by these three sisters was to escape what they knew, and the unflinching, predestined course they could see in front of them. This film wishes to enter their psyche, and it does so almost physically. Magnificent close-up shots govern the focus of much of the film, as they come so close up to the actors’ faces that we see every wrinkle, every twitch, every flinch of emotion played with such compelling intensity. Emma Mackey, in particular, astounds in these shots. A moment that will stick with me is the closing in of the camera on Emma’s face whilst William Weightman (the curate and her love interest, played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is preaching. She does not blink, she cannot, because although she is relatively deadpan her eyes sparkle with every shifting emotion. Her best performance yet, no doubt about it. These are close shots juxtaposed by longer, still frames where Emily, and often her brother Branwell, rambled the countryside; here, its stillness reminds us of them, as we see how the landscape in her narratives always reflected her own life, as well as that of her characters. There are also elements of horror that make some moments hard to look away from, as we expect a jump scare despite knowing we are watching a historical drama. O’ Connor plays with our expectations using the Brontës’ Byronic tendencies beautifully.

The music and sound design also helped to bring me even more into the creative turmoil of Emily’s mind. This film would not be the same without its soundtrack. Beautiful, swelling melodies edge on the characters in their most passionate moments. But, at times, the music is cut off to accompany a harsh cut to black. At other times, sounds are superimposed - be they the voices of Emily reading, the crashing crests of waves over the wind, or birds - to the point where we can feel Emily’s sensory experiences. It was almost synesthetic.

With this freedom, O’Connor had the potential to romanticise the Brontës, the hardship they faced, the death and grief they experienced. Instead, she humanises them. Every character is complex and fully fleshed-out. We are disappointed in Emily when she follows Branwell (Fionn Whitehead) in his path of rebellion just as we might criticise Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) for her righteousness when she reads Wuthering Heights. We despise Weightman, for a split second, when he destroys his relationship with Emily. And yet, we understand every action, and can see every emotional justification they convince themselves with. It is this that O’Connor excels in; indeed, the characterisation reflects the novels she was inspired by. Her exploration of Emily as a woman who struggles with her mental health, who misuses opium to escape her reality and is influenced by her brother to do so, is also never romanticised. Rather, her trauma is explored sensitively.

A word of warning, Emily is both sexy and, at times, historically-inaccurate. It is most definitely a 21st century rendition of how Emily Brontë might have lived, through our lenses and sensibilities; but, in my opinion, this only adds to the film’s atmosphere. From the moment Charlotte asks Emily ‘How did you write Wuthering Heights?’ we are transported into an imagined answer, O’Connor’s version of the events. Although a little on the nose, it is the perfect opening and the perfect end. A true fever dream, especially having seen it here in York, where I can now imagine myself walking across the same Dales or Moors.

I would recommend this movie to anyone with an interest in the romantic, tragic lives of the Brontës, as well as to anyone with an eye for cinema and an ear for music. The viewing experience was all-consuming. Emily is truly a magnetic debut. (Margherita Volpato)

And so does Filmink.

In no manner a traditional biographical film, Emily employs some truths about Emily’s life but prefers to speculate on how a reserved and socially awkward young woman could conceive of her passionate and cruel novel which deeply criticised the morals and social mores of the era in which it was written. For this purpose, O’Connor’s script gives Emily (Emma Mackey) two great loves: her feckless wastrel brother Branwell (Fionn Whitehead) and a young and handsome curate, William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Coen).

Gone are the notions of sisterly love (although Emily’s relationship with Anne (Amelia Gething) remains close but not crucial). O’Connor eyes Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) with a certain coldness. On Emily’s deathbed, Charlotte criticises Wuthering Heights for depicting cruel and selfish people. Yet when Charlotte first reads Emily’s manuscript, she is brought to crippling tears of jealousy. If viewers are looking for a more faithful rendering of the shared companionship of the Brontë family, which also includes Branwell, they are better off tracking down Sally Wainwright’s excellent 2016 television film To Walk Invisible. [...]

Emma Mackey’s performance as Emily is spellbinding. Mackey personifies O’Connor’s vision of the young woman who is filled with contradictions and complexity. Emily’s eyes can transfix, beguile, be filled with anxiety and disappointment and a simmering rage. Mackey is a 21st Century Emily Brontë but maintains a 19th Century authenticity. The chemistry between Mackey and Jackson-Coen is smouldering. As siblings, and avatars in a way for Cathy and Heathcliff, Mackey also has intense chemistry with Fionn Whitehead (in perhaps his best performance thus far). O’Connor doesn’t go so far as to suggest actual incest but there is something deliberately destructive in Branwell’s relationship with Emily.

Brontë purists are going to find Frances O’Connor’s version of the author difficult, because she deliberately eschews a rote biography for the birth of the person who could write Wuthering Heights – a book seen as so shocking by the public of the time that they could only imagine it being written by a man. There will also be complaints about the lack of sisterly affection; Anne being mostly absent from the film, despite being Emily’s closest friend and confidant, will rankle some. O’Connor’s vision is a subversive and sumptuous glimpse of who Emily Brontë could have been, and even though she was unlikely to be the woman the film depicts, the Emily the audience sees on screen has a flesh and blood all of her own. (Nadine Whitney)

A contributor to San Francisco Chronicle is looking forward to seeing Emma Rice's Wuthering Heights at Berkeley Rep (opening November 22nd) and speaks to Emma Rice about the novel and the production.

During the most isolating era of the pandemic, I decided to read all the Brontë sisters’ novels, partly because they, too, were isolated. In 1850, Charlotte Brontë published an account of their living situation in Yorkshire: “Resident in a remote district, where education had made little progress, and where, consequently, there was no inducement to seek social intercourse beyond our own domestic circle, we were wholly dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life.” [...]

Maybe reading their work, I thought, could spur me to imagine my way out of my own isolation, or at least understand it better.

As I marched into Brontëland, I found that Charlotte’s thoughts and prose gleamed, tidy and ferocious. Anne’s writing was smooth yet sturdy, like a wooden chair made comfy by many, many sits. Then there were Emily’s, in “Wuthering Heights,” which thrilled and frightened me.

Now that Berkeley Repertory Theatre is importing Emma Rice’s adaptation of the novel, I decided to look more closely at that fright, seeking guidance from Rice, whose “Brief Encounter” at American Conservatory Theater and “The Wild Bride” at Berkeley Rep have been among the most gorgeous Bay Area shows of the last 15 years.

“Everybody always thinks ‘Wuthering Heights’ is romantic, and it so isn’t,” Rice told me via Zoom from her home in Somerset, England. Her company, Wise Children, is based in Bristol. “It’s the most unromantic book ever. It’s about codependency and torture and emotional abuse and physical abuse.”

In the book’s most famous relationship, Heathcliff (Liam Tamne at Berkeley Rep) and Cathy (Leah Brotherhead) see their love as the only one worthy of the name. Everyone outside of them is mere obstacle, pawn or nonentity, worthy of a sneer or a laugh, if that.

Still, Rice persisted, “that intoxicating, obsessive relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy is just that: It’s intoxicating, but it does not bear scrutiny.” Each projects onto the other and loves the projection, not the human.

“They’re both two trapped human beings who find in each other a possibility of a life they can never have,” Rice continued. “… They’re dreaming of their own freedom — her freedom from being a woman and having no rights to her own wealth, her own life, and and his dream of being a free man.

“I think they want to smash things. I think they are filled with a rage that they cannot name because they’re in the middle of it.”

Accordingly, in the show, she envisions them as punk rockers.

Almost 200 years later, Cathy still thrills as a female character. She spurns all the era’s norms for her sex — demureness, selflessness — without becoming a villain.

“She wants to be in trouble,” Rice said. “In this world where she has no agency, she goes, ‘I don’t think I give a s—.’ She has these grand passions and no loyalty whatsoever. There’s a sort of missing empathy gene. She’s not in the past at all. She’s in the present.”

Rice noted that so much of Heathcliff and Cathy’s love takes place outside on the moors, a forbidding, hostile landscape; she made the moors a chorus of actors in the show.

“Their love affair is described so clearly through them being free on the moors. They run, and they travel great distances. What an amazing metaphor it is for freedom,” she said, adding, “Both of them have this amazing life force which is politically repressed, and that is where their codependency comes: They see something in each other.”

Running outside by ourselves was about all we could do during the worst of the pandemic. During the wildfires, even that was impossible. As I rattled around inside my 600-square-foot apartment, my furniture became wind-blasted dales and coarse, witchy grasses. Like Cathy, I was ready to wail and roar. Thanks to “Wuthering Heights,” I mostly didn’t have to. (Lily Janiak)

Still on stage, The New York Times reviews A Delicate Balance at the Connelly Theater.

The stage appears to be propped up with neatly shelved books — classics from Hemingway, Joyce and Brontë, among others — and wine and cocktail glasses. (Maya Phillips)

Travel + Leisure features the Peak District and reminds its readers that Charlotte got inspiration for Jane Eyre from her visit to Hathersage. A columnist from El Periódico (Spain) writes about Wuthering Heights.