EMILY (2022, UK/USA, 130m, 15) ***½
Biography, Drama
dist. Warner Bros. (UK), Bleecker Street Films (USA); pr co. Ingenious Media / Tempo Productions Limited / Popara Films; d. Frances O’Connor; w. Frances O’Connor; pr. David Barron, Robert Connolly, Robert Patterson, Piers Tempest, Brett Wilson; ph. Nanu Segal (Colour | 2.35:1); m. Abel Korzeniowski; ed. Sam Sneade; pd. Steve Summersgill; ad. Jono Moles.
cast: Emma Mackey (Emily Brontë), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (William Weightman), Fionn Whitehead (Branwell Brontë), Alexandra Dowling (Charlotte Brontë), Amelia Gething (Anne Brontë), Adrian Dunbar (Patrick Brontë), Gemma Jones (Aunt Branwell), Veronica Roberts (Tabby), Gerald Lepkowski (Mr Linton), Cara Foley (Mr0. Linton), Paul Warriner (Reverend Miller), Sacha Parkinson (Ellen Nussey), Emma Bowe (Mrs Pestleman), Philip Desmeules (Monsieur Heger), Darren Langford (The Barman), Richard Anthony-Lloyd (Mr Barker), Robert Pickavance (Sir Ralph Delaney), Elijah Wolf (Boy).
O’Connor’s dense biopic imagines Emily Bronte’s 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. Whilst it obviously plays loose with the facts, the film does generate a sense of time and place and the torment that fed the writer’s creativity. Mackey brings Emily to life with an intense and mesmerising performance, whilst O’Connor builds a painstaking sexual tension between Emily and teacher Weightman (Jackson-Cohen). The pace can be slow at times as O’Connor looks to fill the screen with images of the Yorkshire landscape and character’s inner turmoil, but the director successfully creates an affecting look at the troubled mind and the elements that feed it.
