Pure Fiction, But A Compelling One

 More reactions and comments to the release of the US trailer of Emily:

A highlight at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, actor Frances O’Connor’s directorial debut Emily finds Emma Mackey playing Emily Brontë, set in her own Gothic story that inspired her seminal novel, Wuthering Heights. Haunted by the death of her mother, Emily struggles within the confines of her family life and yearns for artistic and personal freedom, and so begins a journey to channel her creative potential into one of the greatest novels of all time. Ahead of the February 17 release from Bleecker Street, the first trailer has now arrived for the film also starring Fionn Whitehead, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Alexandra Dowling, Adrian Dunbar, and Amelia Gething. (Jordan Raup in The Film Stage)

 Sex Education's Emma Mackey is Emily Brontë in this imagining of the story behind Wuthering Heights. The film finds the author grieving her mother's death and as she channels her emotions into creating the now-famous literary masterpiece. (Erica Gonzales in Elle)

And Moviepulp (Belgium), Nordsee-Zeitung (Germany), CineMedios (in Spanish) ... 

And Australian, Brazilian or Norwegian reviews:

 By coupling this fictionalised affair (there is nothing to suggest that Brontë and Weightman were ever lovers) with Wuthering Heights, O’Connor is spinning a handsome and emotionally honest tale that could be pure fiction, but it’s a compelling one.

And Mackey’s appealing performance, a combination of defiance, depth and vulnerability, brings to life an obscured literary figure. (Wenlei Ma in News.com.au)

O filme inglês tem ótimos momentos, como a cena das máscaras, que resulta em verdadeiro psicodrama. É potente a química entre Emily e o amante perturbado pela culpa (como um pároco-assistente faz o que ele está fazendo com a filha do pároco-titular, de quem é hospede? E seus votos perante Deus, que tudo vê?). Mas o filme podia ser um pouco mais enxuto. 130 minutos caem bem em um épico de guerra. (Maria do Rosário Caetano in Revista de Cinema) (Translation)

 A decepção amorosa e os limites impostos às mulheres (à época) ajudam a consagrar a pecha de "estranha" associada a Emily, disposta a demarcar avanços na sociedade. Ao lado do problemático irmão Branwell (Fionn Whitehead, de Dunkirk), Emily se diverte, mas, igualmente, paga certo preço pela conquista de liberdades. Retratando um vendaval mental da escritora, a diretora consegue dar ideia das dores e da determinação atreladas a Emily. (Ricardo Daehn in Correio Braziliense) (Translation)

Emily Jane Brontë (Emma Mackey) i det landskapet der hun midt på 1800-tallet skapte en av de mest betydningsfulle romanene i engelsk litteratur. (Øyvor Dalan Vik in Dagens Næringsliv) (Translation)

And an interview with the director Frances O'Connor in the Brisbane Times:

 Wuthering Heights made a big impression on O’Connor, too. She first read it as a teenager on the 45-minute journey she made daily from Lesmurdie in the outer eastern suburbs of Perth to Mercedes Ladies College in the city.

“I remember going into that world on the bus and looking up and feeling like I’d been somewhere,” she says. “The book really spoke to me at that age. These two characters, Heathcliff and Cathy, who were kind of disenfranchised and rebellious and no one understood them.”

Was that you?

“I think that’s every teenager. Definitely, I felt anxious growing up – I’m an introvert, so sometimes I found socialising challenging.” (...)

Her film is a kind of patchwork that fuses Wuthering Heights and the scant known biographical details to generate an imagined version of Emily Bronte’s life in which the assumption is that at least some of what’s in the book must have been inspired by her own experiences.

“It’s me using my imagination to create this world with things from Wuthering Heights, things from Emily’s life, and things from my life as well, to tell this story about a woman forming herself against the patriarchy, against what is the norm and how she’s supposed to be,” says O’Connor.

It’s fanciful, but anchored. “We tried not to have any bullshit in the story,” she says. “I told everybody ‘bring your real self’ because people connect to it if you try and be real – not earnest, but real with everything: now you’re funny, now you feel shitty, now you’re this and that. If you’re all those things, then people connect to it in a way that I think makes them think it’s modern. Maybe. I don’t know.” (...)

The film’s Emily has a consummated romance with Weightman, the curate who comes to assist in the parish where the Brontes’ father is the vicar. There is no evidence that Emily had a sexual relationship with anyone in real life – “No, you’ve just gotta hope,” O’Connor says with a laugh – but there’s enough circumstantial evidence to suggest she might at least have had the opportunity.

There was a real William Weightman, and some have conjectured that he had a romantic connection with Anne, though some feelings may have existed between him and Emily, too.

“There was a period where it was Weightman, Branwell and Emily kicking around the parsonage for two years while Charlotte and Anne were off being governesses or educating themselves,” says O’Connor. “And I always felt like, what happened then? Not that she had an affair, but she would have been sitting watching those guys ... I’ve always felt like Branwell was a prototype for Heathcliff and Weightman was a prototype for Edgar [Linton, whom Catherine marries], and that maybe they influenced her writing it.” (Karl Quinn)

Emily will be the opening film at the 29th Victoria Film Festival:

The event kicks off Feb. 3 at 6:30 p.m. at the Vic Theatre, 808 Douglas St., with Emily as the opening film. (Carla Wilson in The Times Colonist)

Bafta has unveiled the longlists for 2023 film awards and Emily is on the Outstanding British Film and Outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer.  

Vulture considers the film an adaptation of sorts of Wuthering Heights:

Frances O’Connor’s upcoming biographical film about Emily Brontë is not a direct adaptation of the renowned English author’s Wuthering Heights but a tale of how the novel came to be. Emily provides a fictionalized account of Brontë’s inspirations when her sister asks her to reveal them. Between episodes of love, supernatural experiences, and heartbreak, she pens her famous novel with a desire for purpose and preservation. (Emily Maskell)

Los Angeles Magazine recommends the upcoming performances of Wise Children's Wuthering Heights:

 This unique take on the classic transforms Emily Brontë’s timeless masterpiece, Wuthering Heights, into an “intoxicating story of revenge” fit for the contemporary moment. If you don’t know the story behind Brontë’s novel, there is no better way to suck all of the information up in one sitting. (Julius Miller)

The New Republic reviews I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys by Miranda Seymour:

Published at last in 1966, Wide Sargasso Sea brought fame and fortune. Rhys’s books were reprinted, and when she died in 1979, she was a literary celebrity. And deservedly so. Wide Sargasso Sea is the book that brings together all the partially realized wisdom inherent in the other Rhys novels, and makes it count as it had not counted before. Here, it runs deep and it runs true.

In this novel, Rhys takes as a backstory a piece of the bare-bones plot of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Mr. Rochester, a repressed Victorian, has come to the West Indies looking for a rich wife. (...)

We see how instrumental is Antoinette’s stake in the relationship; how profoundly she feels (without knowing it) that his passion is necessary to the achievement of her own sense of self; at the same time we also see—nay, feel—all this erotic primitivism bound up with the overwhelming fecundity of the island itself. Everywhere there is radiance and rot; everything overheated and overgrown, heavy with a malignant self-concern. The roads themselves are only clearings forever threatening to be sucked back into the encroaching forests. The loss of control over nature is complete. This is what Rhys had been trying to say for 40 years. (Vivian Gornick)

The New York Times shares some of the reading (or other) goals of its staff:

 We’ve talked about watching the new German film adaptation afterward, but we may find we don’t have the stomachs for more than one tour through the carnage of World War I. For our next pick, we are thinking something a little lighter — a groundswell is building for “Wuthering Heights.” ( Emily Eakin, preview editor)

More on the Jessie Kilguss cover of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights. Amplify Music Magazine talks with the singer:

Now she’s back with ‘Wuthering Heights’, paying tribute to heroine Kate Bush, along with a new fantasy-invoking picturesque video. What a great way to kick off the new year by channeling a great classic anew, albeit with an indie-folk twist.

“Alex Dar, a Russian artist, made the video. He’d never heard of Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ or the novel by Emily Brontë.  I told him the story of the book and song and sent him some photos I’ve taken in Ireland over the years, many of the ruin of Clifden Castle.  He came up with something unique. I like that he didn’t have Kate Bush’s brilliant videos for this song as a reference for what he created. I like that he didn’t know her incredible original version of the song either. It meant he had to create something from scratch from my version of the song and from the photos and storyline I told him,” says Jessie Kilguss. (...)

essie Kilguss explains, “I’ve been covering this song live for a couple of years. I’m a big fan of Kate Bush. I read ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë when I was a teenager and loved it. I wonder if that would be the case as an adult. The song ‘Wuthering Heights’ really captures the spirit of the book in its melodrama and angst. I find it really fun to sing because of that. One of the things I love about Kate Bush is that she deals in big emotions and is a master storyteller. I find this song so compelling. It’s extraordinary that she wrote it when she was a teenager.”

Philosophie Magazine (France) reviews the book Pourquoi le mal frappe les gens bien? by Frédérique Leichter-Flack:

De maladies en désastres, de deuils en échecs, on se rend compte avec Brontë, Dostoïevski ou Yourcenar que les idées comptent moins que les mots et que les souffrances s’apaisent plus difficilement par les concepts que par le dialogue. Pourquoi ? Parce qu’il n’y a pas d’autre antidote à la douleur que l’empathie, si bien que c’est en vivant ensemble les grandes épreuves – même à se plaindre les uns aux autres qu’elles soient si singulières, si peu partageables – qu’en réalité, on les traverse bel et bien. Si la sagesse est de souffrir sans s’y refuser, on peut laisser libre cours à sa peine. (Maxime Rovere) (Translation)

Derbund (Switzerland) talks about nightmares:

Irgendwann ist er vor Angst wie gelähmt, schreit und wacht auf. So schildert die englische Autorin Emily Brontë in ihrem Klassiker «Sturmhöhe» den Albtraum. (Alexandra Bröhm) (Translation)

Sentieri Selvaggi (Italy) reviews Lady Chatterley's Lover 2022:

Degna di nota la regia di Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, che come già detto da un lato non si scompone mai, mentre dall’altro risulta curata ed efficace da un punto di vista puramente visivo, mescolandosi ad una fotografia classica ma al tempo stesso resa moderna dalla qualità dell’immagine, che ricorda molto il Jane Eyre di Cary Fukunaga, altro film che brillava più per i bellissimi paesaggi che per l’effettivo cuore del prodotto. (Veronica Orciari) (Translation)

Wuthering Heights on an engagement captions list in Woman's Day and Charlotte Brontë is quoted in a list of sister quotes in Donna Glamour (Italy). The Brontës get a mention in this article about the Whitby Goth Weekends in The Yorkshire Post.