“Emily,” Frances O’Connor’s take on the inner life of one of literature’s moodiest, broodiest romantics, embraces life on the moors as a clear alternative to the bulk of 19th-century English society. Now available on VOD and starring Emma Mackey as Emily Brontë — the gangly outcast who poured her ache for what cannot be into “Wuthering Heights” — her place in the world and within her own family is subtly but craftily conveyed by her dresses.
Oscar-nominated costume designer Michael O’Connor is no stranger to the 19th century, having done everything from “The Duchess” to the 2011 “Jane Eyre.” Within the era’s fashion, he finds ways in which to make Emily stick out, her unease in her own skin peeking through what she wears.
For the model of how to get along as an intellectual woman with limited vocational options (and of firstborn sibling syndrome in overdrive), the film offers...
Oscar-nominated costume designer Michael O’Connor is no stranger to the 19th century, having done everything from “The Duchess” to the 2011 “Jane Eyre.” Within the era’s fashion, he finds ways in which to make Emily stick out, her unease in her own skin peeking through what she wears.
For the model of how to get along as an intellectual woman with limited vocational options (and of firstborn sibling syndrome in overdrive), the film offers...
- 4/17/2023
- by Sarah Shachat
- Indiewire
Emma Mackey in Emily. Photo credit: Bleecker Street. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.
What if Emily Bronte, the author of “Wuthering Heights” and painfully shy daughter of a parson, secretly had a steamy love affair with her father’s assistant? Could have happened, right?
Well, no, but the highly imaginative historical drama Emily posits such a hidden romance. Emily is less a biography than a fantasy of the life the director might have wished the author had, something more possible now than then.
Emily is the latest in a series of historical dramas that posit a secret love life for a famous unmarried female 19th century author. While such what-if romances might be fun, this one goes pretty far from the factual, in the romance imagined and other acts of rebellious behavior. However, where the film has more depth is in its other aspect, a speculative inner progression from shy, reclusive...
What if Emily Bronte, the author of “Wuthering Heights” and painfully shy daughter of a parson, secretly had a steamy love affair with her father’s assistant? Could have happened, right?
Well, no, but the highly imaginative historical drama Emily posits such a hidden romance. Emily is less a biography than a fantasy of the life the director might have wished the author had, something more possible now than then.
Emily is the latest in a series of historical dramas that posit a secret love life for a famous unmarried female 19th century author. While such what-if romances might be fun, this one goes pretty far from the factual, in the romance imagined and other acts of rebellious behavior. However, where the film has more depth is in its other aspect, a speculative inner progression from shy, reclusive...
- 2/24/2023
- by Cate Marquis
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Emily begins and ends with Emily Brontë on her deathbed. Is it heartbreak that led to her early death at the age of 30 or something less dramatic? Her death’s attributed to tuberculosis (the same disease that took her siblings), but first-time feature film writer/director Frances O’Connor paints such a gorgeous picture of a life full of tragedy, romance, betrayal, and longing that she makes it possible to believe Emily succumbed to something more mysterious and befitting of the author of Wuthering Heights.
Brontë siblings Emily (Emma Mackey), Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), Anne (Amelia Gething), and Branwell (Fionn Whitehead) are artistically inclined, with Branwell – the sole male – the free-spirited, wild child of the group. They all share an ability and desire to write.
Of the siblings, Branwell and Emily’s relationship proves the most interesting in O’Connor’s directorial debut. Emily dearly loves her impulsive brother, and both push...
Brontë siblings Emily (Emma Mackey), Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), Anne (Amelia Gething), and Branwell (Fionn Whitehead) are artistically inclined, with Branwell – the sole male – the free-spirited, wild child of the group. They all share an ability and desire to write.
Of the siblings, Branwell and Emily’s relationship proves the most interesting in O’Connor’s directorial debut. Emily dearly loves her impulsive brother, and both push...
- 2/23/2023
- by Rebecca Murray
- Showbiz Junkies
I was wowed by “Emily” from writer-director Frances O’Connor. I was expecting a by-the-numbers biopic but what I got was an intriguing, soulful, and vibrant look at the life of Emily Brontë played by the wonderful Emma Mackey. Matching her is Oliver Jackson-Cohen as William Weightman. I spoke to both Mackey (who recently received
The post “Emily” Interview with Emma Mackey, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and Writer/Director Frances O’Connor appeared first on Manny the Movie Guy.
The post “Emily” Interview with Emma Mackey, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and Writer/Director Frances O’Connor appeared first on Manny the Movie Guy.
- 2/23/2023
- by manny
- Manny the Movie Guy
Frances O’Connor’s Emily, her directorial debut, takes a familiar literary biography and garnishes it with the right kind of creative liberties — the vibrant, suggestive kind. It’s the story of Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights, younger sister to Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre and Villette. Emily isn’t a straight biopic but, at its best, a suggestive and enjoyable exploration of a young, imaginative mind and its troubles — Emily is, from the start of the movie, a woman brushing up against the limits of decorum, increasingly so as the myth-building,...
- 2/22/2023
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
There’s a practice known as bibliomancy, where readers will open the Bible to a random page in the hopes that the passage they encounter will provide a needed answer to a dilemma. In Mike Leigh’s “Career Girls,” the collegiate heroines practice their own version, called “Miss Brontë, Miss Brontë,” wherein they ask a question and then open “Wuthering Heights” in search of counsel.
How the powerful and provocative “Wuthering Heights” came to be the single novel produced by a relatively sheltered woman who died at the age of 30 is the subject of “Emily,” a powerful debut feature from actor and filmmaker Frances O’Connor. Craftily combining fact, fiction and conjecture, O’Connor captures the inner life of Emily Brontë, a writer presented here as carrying within her the same wind and storms that she immortalized on paper.
The writer-director is aided immeasurably by lead actor Emma Mackey (“Death on the Nile...
How the powerful and provocative “Wuthering Heights” came to be the single novel produced by a relatively sheltered woman who died at the age of 30 is the subject of “Emily,” a powerful debut feature from actor and filmmaker Frances O’Connor. Craftily combining fact, fiction and conjecture, O’Connor captures the inner life of Emily Brontë, a writer presented here as carrying within her the same wind and storms that she immortalized on paper.
The writer-director is aided immeasurably by lead actor Emma Mackey (“Death on the Nile...
- 2/17/2023
- by Alonso Duralde
- The Wrap
"Emily" is the new biographical drama feature, written and directed by Frances O'Connor, depicting a version of the life of English writer 'Emily Brontë' (Emma Mackey), co-starring Fionn Whitehead, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Alexandra Dowling, Amelia Gething, Adrian Dunbar and Gemma Jones:
"...as author 'Emily Brontë' is near death, her older sister 'Charlotte' asks her what inspired her to write her novel 'Wuthering Heights...
"...as she begins to recount a love affair with 'William Weightman'..."
Click the images to enlarge...
"...as author 'Emily Brontë' is near death, her older sister 'Charlotte' asks her what inspired her to write her novel 'Wuthering Heights...
"...as she begins to recount a love affair with 'William Weightman'..."
Click the images to enlarge...
- 1/6/2023
- by Unknown
- SneakPeek
The author of Wuthering Heights is no sickly recluse in actor turned director Frances O’Connor’s sensuous, spine-tingling feature debut
“How did you write Wuthering Heights?” demands a rattled Charlotte Brontë (Alexandra Dowling) in the opening moments of this inventive, urgent gothic fable that, like Andrew Dominik’s misunderstood Blonde, could hardly be mistaken for a drearily factual biopic. “It’s an ugly book,” Charlotte complains as her sister Emily (Sex Education’s Emma Mackey) swoons beside her, a three-volume edition of the offending text (“full of selfish people who only really care for themselves”) propped next to a medicine bottle at her elbow. When Emily replies that she simply put pen to paper, Charlotte is unassuaged, insisting that “there is something…”. Only later, when the literary torch is passed on and she can make peace with her own ghosts, does Charlotte start to realise what that “something” is…
Punctuated...
“How did you write Wuthering Heights?” demands a rattled Charlotte Brontë (Alexandra Dowling) in the opening moments of this inventive, urgent gothic fable that, like Andrew Dominik’s misunderstood Blonde, could hardly be mistaken for a drearily factual biopic. “It’s an ugly book,” Charlotte complains as her sister Emily (Sex Education’s Emma Mackey) swoons beside her, a three-volume edition of the offending text (“full of selfish people who only really care for themselves”) propped next to a medicine bottle at her elbow. When Emily replies that she simply put pen to paper, Charlotte is unassuaged, insisting that “there is something…”. Only later, when the literary torch is passed on and she can make peace with her own ghosts, does Charlotte start to realise what that “something” is…
Punctuated...
- 10/16/2022
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
Biopics of our great ladies of literature seem to fall into one of two camps, either holding the authors at a remove and peering at their lives with careful reverence or reimagining their realities as twee picture postcard fantasies and patronising them with a love interest to keep things interesting. Mercifully, Frances O’Connor’s Emily is a different creature altogether; raw, vulnerable and brave; captured with bold strokes and brimming with female rage. I loved her.
Emily (Emma Mackey) is feeling the pressure to put away childish things such as hopes and dreams and follow in her sisters’ footsteps by going out to work and supporting the family. Her brother Branwell may be free to follow his artistic whims but the three surviving sisters have to be more pragmatic. Their days of running free on the moors with the wind wuthering at their backs are far behind them and the...
Emily (Emma Mackey) is feeling the pressure to put away childish things such as hopes and dreams and follow in her sisters’ footsteps by going out to work and supporting the family. Her brother Branwell may be free to follow his artistic whims but the three surviving sisters have to be more pragmatic. Their days of running free on the moors with the wind wuthering at their backs are far behind them and the...
- 10/14/2022
- by Emily Breen
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Dir: Frances O’Connor. Starring: Emma Mackey, Fionn Whitehead, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Alexandra Dowling, Amelia Gething, Adrian Dunbar, Gemma Jones. 15, 130 minutes.
“How did you write it?” asks Charlotte Brontë (Alexandra Dowling) of her sister Emily (Emma Mackey). “How did you write Wuthering Heights?”. This is where actor-turned-director Frances O’Connor begins her feverish reimagining of Emily Brontë’s brief life – not at the start but at the very end, Emily a wasted figure nearly consumed by tuberculosis. For O’Connor knows how tantalising that question of “how” can be to us.
Wuthering Heights was the only novel Emily wrote before her death, aged 30, in 1848. We don’t know much of who she was beyond those pages – she documented little about herself, and even her surviving diary entries diverge frequently into fantasy. The film, written and directed by O’Connor in her feature debut, stays faithful to that fervent sense of imagination. Having...
“How did you write it?” asks Charlotte Brontë (Alexandra Dowling) of her sister Emily (Emma Mackey). “How did you write Wuthering Heights?”. This is where actor-turned-director Frances O’Connor begins her feverish reimagining of Emily Brontë’s brief life – not at the start but at the very end, Emily a wasted figure nearly consumed by tuberculosis. For O’Connor knows how tantalising that question of “how” can be to us.
Wuthering Heights was the only novel Emily wrote before her death, aged 30, in 1848. We don’t know much of who she was beyond those pages – she documented little about herself, and even her surviving diary entries diverge frequently into fantasy. The film, written and directed by O’Connor in her feature debut, stays faithful to that fervent sense of imagination. Having...
- 10/13/2022
- by Clarisse Loughrey
- The Independent - Film
There are no flirtations with the fourth wall in Frances O’Connor’s “Emily.” There is no synthpop on the soundtrack. No one ranks the relative attractiveness of the Brontë sisters on a scale out of 10, or attempts, bustle be damned, to twerk. Yet despite lacking all markers of the recent trend for girlbossified costume drama, the directorial debut from O’Connor — an actor who is no stranger to corsetry herself after “Mansfield Park” and “The Importance of Being Earnest” — gives us a strikingly current take on the Brontë behind “Wuthering Heights.” Unlike many a literary biopic, it feels anything but pagebound. If “Emily” were a book, however, it would be a fresh reissue of a Penguin Classic, with its timeless orange cover unobtrusively updated to be crisp and covetable all over again.
In attentively reimagining Emily Brontë as a new woman unluckily born into old days, O’Connor’s chief ally is her star,...
In attentively reimagining Emily Brontë as a new woman unluckily born into old days, O’Connor’s chief ally is her star,...
- 9/15/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Emily, the directorial debut for Mansfield Park and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence star Frances O’Connor, is one of the more remarkably assured first efforts in recent memory. Shot with breathtaking beauty and acted with extraordinary emotion and grace, this exploration of the life and development of Emily Brontë is tremendously enveloping. Emily looks deep into Brontë’s life story for evidence of what that really means. While it is unclear how much of the film is historically accurate and how much is conjecture, O’Connor’s account of the author of Wuthering Heights feels respectful and well-reasoned.
Emma Mackey (Sex Education) plays Emily Brontë as an intelligent, emotionally fragile figure attempting to figure out where she fits in both her family and the world-at-large in 1800s England. She lives with her mostly dour father, her younger sister Anna (Amelia Gething), and older sister Charlotte. Hovering on the outskirts is...
Emma Mackey (Sex Education) plays Emily Brontë as an intelligent, emotionally fragile figure attempting to figure out where she fits in both her family and the world-at-large in 1800s England. She lives with her mostly dour father, her younger sister Anna (Amelia Gething), and older sister Charlotte. Hovering on the outskirts is...
- 9/10/2022
- by Christopher Schobert
- The Film Stage
Click here to read the full article.
She was an impenetrable figure: shy, reclusive, suspicious of new friends and more at home in the Yorkshire moors than any village or city. She was also brilliant — a gifted poet whose foray into fiction, Wuthering Heights (the only novel she wrote before her death in 1848), spins a tale so eccentric and passionate that it’s gathered a febrile following since its publication.
Emily Brontë, the second youngest of the accomplished Brontë family, was an abstract figure. Details of her life are scant. (Most known testimony was provided by her overbearing older sister, Charlotte.) She was not a fastidious diarist and existing journal entries blur the lines between fact and fiction. In other words, Emily, a virtually unknowable person, is the perfect subject for a film.
The English-Australian actress Frances O’Connor (Mansfield Park) knows this, and that’s why her directorial debut Emily...
She was an impenetrable figure: shy, reclusive, suspicious of new friends and more at home in the Yorkshire moors than any village or city. She was also brilliant — a gifted poet whose foray into fiction, Wuthering Heights (the only novel she wrote before her death in 1848), spins a tale so eccentric and passionate that it’s gathered a febrile following since its publication.
Emily Brontë, the second youngest of the accomplished Brontë family, was an abstract figure. Details of her life are scant. (Most known testimony was provided by her overbearing older sister, Charlotte.) She was not a fastidious diarist and existing journal entries blur the lines between fact and fiction. In other words, Emily, a virtually unknowable person, is the perfect subject for a film.
The English-Australian actress Frances O’Connor (Mansfield Park) knows this, and that’s why her directorial debut Emily...
- 9/10/2022
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Emma Mackey is starring in a new fictionalized biopic about the life of Emily Brontë, best known for writing "Wuthering Heights." Before she appears alongside Margot Robbie in "Barbie" in 2023, the "Sex Education" star will play the iconic writer in the period drama, which will imagine Brontë's theoretical relationship with William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a real-life figure who was an associate of her father. While Brontë's personal life is famously enigmatic, the film will imagine a more dramatic backstory to the writer's life.
Bronte was born in 1818 and died of tuberculosis at the age of 30. Along with her sister Charlotte, who wrote "Jane Eyre," she is now one of the most beloved writers of her era. A relative recluse during her life, she has proven a difficult subject from biographers, and most of what's known about her is taken from her sister Charlotte's writing.
"My sister's disposition was not...
Bronte was born in 1818 and died of tuberculosis at the age of 30. Along with her sister Charlotte, who wrote "Jane Eyre," she is now one of the most beloved writers of her era. A relative recluse during her life, she has proven a difficult subject from biographers, and most of what's known about her is taken from her sister Charlotte's writing.
"My sister's disposition was not...
- 8/13/2022
- by Eden Arielle Gordon
- Popsugar.com
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