Emily

Emma Mackey as Emily

My reaction to Frances O'Connor's Emily was conflicted. O'Connor has not attempted a biopic of Emily Bronte, but an evocation of the soul of the writer. That is why the numerous historical inaccuracies in the film didn't particularly bother me. Ms. O'Connor wants to show how the tempestuous soul of the strangest and greatest Bronte sister was forged and how the Romantic tumult of her personality was reflected in her creation, Wuthering Heights. So, I will set aside the film's lack of fealty to the facts of Bronte's life which troubled a number of critics.

The flick doesn't live up to the "half-civilized ferocity" of Bronte. When O'Connor tries to mimic the uncanny power of the novel, in a ghostly visitation by Emily's dead mother, the moment lacks impact. The images aren't as startling or disturbing as the moment in Wuthering Heights in which Lockwood dreams of Catherine's ghost bloodying her wrist on broken window glass. The director does make good use of window and ocular (the eyes being the windows to the soul) imagery, but the end result is only fitfully effective. I thought the footage of the brooding Emily wandering the Yorkshire moors was superior to the outdoor sequences in William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, but found sequences of Emily using opiates lacking in any sense of narcotic delirium.

I feel O'Connor wanted to present Emily Bronte as a woman on the cusp of modernity hemmed in by her backwater upbringing. Bronte is portrayed as a free thinker who lacks intellectual companionship. However, because of this, Emma Mackey's performance often jars with the more period appropriate performances of the rest of the ensemble. This, I'll stress again, may have been O'Connor's intent, but the film is neither melodramatic nor perverse enough to support this incongruity. O'Connor's biggest error is having Emily fall for Oliver Jackson-Cohen's William Weightman. The heaving and bodice ripping that results seem out of place for a male character who has all the dash and fervor of a stolid curate.

Still, the film is fairly accomplished for a maiden effort and I hope Ms. O'Connor returns soon to the director's chair. She displays a firm hand with her cast, there are no indifferent performances, and a clear eyed intelligence about her subject. What Emily needed was more of the artistic boldness that Ms. Bronte herself displayed.