Movie review: Emily

Emma Mackey as Emily is riveting and suitably bewitching. Photo / Supplied

Emily (M, 130 mins)

In cinemas now

Directed by Frances O’Connor

Reviewer: Jen Shieff

The first person to bring an image or a hard copy of this review to Starlight Cinema Taupo qualifies for a free ticket to Emily.

If you haven’t read Wuthering Heights recently, or ever, and if you know nothing about Emily Brontë's life, don’t worry. Writer-director Frances O’Connor’s imaginative, emotionally charged film will take you to the heart of all of it.

There’s a historic setting, as befits a story about Emily Brontë's life and times, but the behaviour of the characters and some of their language is almost contemporary. It’s not like the Netflix series Bridgerton (2020-22, Shonda Rimes), though. Bridgerton was essentially created for laughs. Like Bridgerton, however, Emily strongly suggests society was overdue for a shakeup but in the meantime, people are doing the best they can with what’s in front of them.

Viewers looking for nods to Wuthering Heights or what’s known of Emily Brontë's life story will find things like ghostly trees featuring in a remote Yorkshire landscape, fireside storytelling, violent storms, untimely death, people peering through windows and a neighbouring rich family called the Lintons. And they’ll find the driving force of both Wuthering Heights and Emily is the passion between the two main characters.

Emma Mackey as Emily is riveting and suitably bewitching. The exquisitely tender love scenes involving Emily and her secret love, Mr William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), her father’s new curate, are key to the film’s success.

Many kinds of love hold the Brontë family together, Frances O’Connor shows us. There’s the love the siblings Emily, Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), Anne (Amelia Gething) and Branwell (Fionn Whitehead) have for their deceased mother, chillingly channelled by Emily in an early scene with a spooky mask. Then there’s the stern kind of love the father (Adrian Dunbar) has for his children and the love of God, and which inspires Mr Weightman’s moving first sermon.

Free-spirited Branwell, who loves Emily above anyone else, brings out Emily’s wild side. Their boisterous antics are a good counterbalance for the scholarly intensity of Emily’s French lessons.

But it’s Branwell who causes Emily’s life path to take a tragic turn. In one of his drunken stupors, Branwell withholds a vital letter, causing Emily to go into a downward spiral. The story ends with her pouring her aching heart and bereft soul into the writing of Wuthering Heights.

Yorkshire itself is bleakly splendid, almost becoming a character. The moors are shown in many different lights, with rare moments of sunshine amidst storms.

Two minor characters stand out for different reasons. Charlotte Brontë's primness and jealousy are a useful contrast with Emily’s readiness to leap into life, unhindered. But it’s not clear why Aunt Branwell (Gemma Jones) is there, except for the respectability she represents. As another aunt, Anne Lister in BBC One’s Gentleman Jack (2019-22, Sally Wainwright), Gemma Jones was valuable as a mother substitute, tolerant and wise.

After an overly slow first half hour, Emily becomes an absorbing film. The dialogue is excellent, the acting outstanding. It’s beautifully costumed by Michael O’Connor (European Film Award winner and Bafta Best Costuming nominee for Ammonite, 2020, Francis Lee). Overall, it’s a very good yarn indeed.

Highly recommended.

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