Emily: licence to seduce

According to Financial Review, Frances O'Connor's Emily 'is a skilfully told tale, but it’s almost certainly not the story of Emily Brontë'.

O’Connor, who has also written the script, has taken hints and suggestions from the accounts of the Brontës to create a romance that will seem more or less plausible, depending on how much one already knows about the subject. As a large part of a writer’s life is spent sitting in a room writing, with a biopic there’s always a temptation to make the other bits seem more dramatic by way of compensation.

Accordingly, O’Connor has emphasised the possible tensions that existed between sisters Emily (Emma Mackey) and Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), which find expression in a series of awkward, antagonistic moments. It leaves us with an unflattering and possibly unfair impression of Charlotte. We learn comparatively little about Emily’s relationship with her younger sister, Anne (Amelia Gething), although they were said to be inseparable.

Instead, O’Connor has played up the relationship between Emily and her ne’er-do-well brother, Branwell (Fionn Whitehead). In this film, Emily, considered “strange” by straight-laced Charlotte, is Branwell’s soulmate and companion. They take opium together, they slip out at night to peer through the neighbours’ windows, they hang out at the pub. In one scene they spin around in a daze in a way reminiscent of Kate Bush’s take on Wuthering Heights. [...]

We’ve seen this willingness to make up a new sexual identity for an historical figure in Francis Lee’s Ammonite (2020), in which the 19th century fossil hunter Mary Anning was plunged into a lesbian relationship with the wife of a scientist. There was no evidence that Mary had any sexual life whatsoever – and so it is with Emily Brontë.

We find it hard to picture a sexless existence, but there must be plenty of people – either by choice or circumstance – who lead such lives. It could even be argued that Wuthering Heights is one of the great novels of sexual sublimination, the work of a passionate virgin with a vivid imagination.

In Emily, Emma Mackey has clearly been given a licence to seduce. She stares out at us with wide eyes, all moody and sultry. We are invited to see her as a woman born before her time, whose nature is better suited to a free-thinking age. What may seem “strange” to the villagers, and to Charlotte, is only too familiar to us, who recognise a feminist avant la lettre.

O’Connor was surely aware that Wuthering Heights was published under the male pseudonym Ellis Bell, so it’s surprising that we see the book with Emily’s name on it. One presumes this is intended as an affirmation of identity, but it would have revealed more about her world to leave the alias intact.

Perhaps the best way to approach this film is to treat the Brontës themselves as fictional characters. It’s easier to appreciate this tale as a gothic coming-of-age fantasy set in one of those rugged, barren, landscapes that infects everyone with gloom, if not tuberculosis. The camerawork is consistently atmospheric, whether we are gazing upon the emptiness of the moors or snuggled up with the sisters in their tomb-like bedroom. There’s a story here, and it’s skilfully told, but it’s almost certainly not the story of Emily Brontë. (John McDonald)

El Heraldo de Aragón (Spain) reviews the film as well.

La película transmite la esencia de la compleja obra y lleva a entender las emociones plasmadas en sus páginas desde el retrato de su singular autora, Emily Brontë. Un enfoque acompañado de la sugerencia de que no se trata de una biografía, sino de una exposición de vida imaginada y, por lo tanto, se construye sobre lo que evoca su figura. (Enrique Abenia) (Translation)

And so does Alfa y Omega (Spain):

Ubicada en los páramos de Yorkshire, la película describe muy bien el ambiente formalista y moralista de la sociedad británica rural de la época victoriana. El padre de las Brönte, pastor anglicano, aparece retratado en el filme como un hombre estricto y con escasa flexibilidad mental, por cierto, muy bien interpretado por Adrian Dunbar. Como era de esperar, la directora y guionista pone el acento —sin absurdos énfasis, todo hay que decirlo— en la perspectiva feminista, denunciando una sociedad en la que la mujer tenía mermadas muchas de sus capacidades creativas y estaba en diversos aspectos sometida a la voluntad del varón. Aunque la película tiene una indudable impronta poética, una magnífica fotografía y es elegante en términos generales, no puede escapar de una atmósfera que se va entristeciendo y languideciendo en torno a una vida que solo duró 30 años y que, según la película, tuvo más tristezas que alegrías. (Juan Orellana) (Translation)

MovieWeb selects it as one of the 12 literary films of 2023.

8 Emily

Emily is Frances O’Connor’s debut as a director and selects the writer Emily Brontë as her subject. Emma Mackey portrays Brontë during the events that led her to write the classical novel Wuthering Heights. A fictionalized take on the writer’s life begins with her dying and transitions to a flashback format, one where Emily, still a young woman who has not had a formal education yet, meets a man that captures her heart. However, this is where the movie takes its creative liberties: this male lead did not exist in real life. (Ashley Hajimirsadeghi)

Daily Maverick reviews Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Books of Not – Life.

They bring to life a masterful tragic heroine who, like Agnes Bain, must be one of the greats of (modern) literature. If we need literary reference points I would say Tambudzai is as much a tortured product of her time as Cathy Earnshaw in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; strange though it may seem, Dangarembga’s alienation is not a million miles from that felt by the three Brontë  sisters (reconstructed so marvellously in Juliet Barker’s great literary biography The Brontës). (Mark Heywood)

El Progreso (Spain) discusses ghost stories.

Sin querer restar valor a los clásicos del género, a los que ya me he referido en otras ocasiones –como Cumbres borrascosas o Jane Eyre de las hermanas Brontë– los fantasmas se convierten en el motivo central o subsidiario de otras interesantes obras literarias. (Diana Aradas) (Translation)

Les Inrockuptibles (France) features the newly translated into French Revolution from Within by Gloria Steinem.

En effet, en comparant Les Hauts de Hurlevent à Jane Eyre (respectivement de Emily et Charlotte Brontë), Gloria Steinem démontre comment notre idée du romantisme est en réalité la manifestation d’une mutilation : “Nous faisons l’amour avec le reste de nous-même”. L’obligation de tenir son rôle patriarcal conduisant chaque sexe à renoncer à la totalité de ce qui le constitue :“Plus une culture est patriarcale et polarisée entre les genres, plus elle a un insatiable besoin de romance. Ces mythes incarnent notre désir de complétude”. Steinem voit en Catherine et Heathcliff l’archétype de la romance, chacun cherchant en l’autre les parts réprimées de lui-même dans une addiction mortifère, et repère a contrario dans le lien de Rochester et Jane Eyre ce que peut être l’amour : “deux êtres uniques qui agissent avec tendresse l’un envers l’autre”. (Leonore Chastagner) (Translation)

Great British Life visits Elizabeth Gaskell's room including the newly-opened Brontë room.