As Flaubert is Emma Bovary, Emily Brontë has always had much in common with Heathcliff, the wild and dark protagonist of Wuthering Heights, the quintessentially English romance and the first and only of its celebrated authors. Emily Brontë was a young woman who was a far cry from the flirty little country postcard of little women her sister Charlotte was to reveal after Emily’s untimely death of tuberculosis in 1848 at the age of 30. The directorial debut of Australian-British actress Frances O’Connor – best known as Fanny Price in the 1999 version of Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park – delves into the mystery of a writer whose quirks put her ahead of her time.
More information
In her recreation of the Brontë myth, O’Connor does not succumb to presenteeism. Neither in the simple wink of the current public. But it brings in biographical aspects that have come into focus recently. Emily is not a biopic, but fiction that explores the true irrepressible nature of the writer and her family ties, particularly in the character of her brother Brandwell, the Brontës’ darling, who eventually got carried away by his addiction to alcohol and to opium. Emily always had a particularly complicit relationship with him.
With all her clumsiness (unnecessary musical underlining, slow-motion brushstrokes…) Emily captivates the viewer because she manages to recreate a far from idyllic family environment and because actress Emma Mackey portrays the writer, a woman whose introversion borders on the pathological. According to the latest findings, this could be due to the fact that he even suffered from Asperger’s syndrome.
More information
Mackey’s choice is risky and wise. At first glance it seems to have strayed too far from the stereotype we associate with the Victorian era, something the rest of the cast does. But as the film progresses, her beauty represents very well the author’s egocentric and angry character, her discrepancy with reality. A woman who grew up in a puritanical and austere environment, from which she escaped thanks to her fertile imagination and her symbiosis with the green valleys of Yorkshire, that connection with nature that, according to the poet Ted Hughes, hid the secret of erotic intensity his work.
The question the film seeks to answer is posed by his sister, Charlotte, when Wuthering Heights is already out: “Where do your stories come from?” immorally accused of having resurrected years later than the classic it remains to this day. The shy clergyman’s daughter had broken Victorian rules to be ahead of her time with a tale of mad and ghostly love. A novel that traverses Emily and her secret passions, from the shadow of incest to the unfathomable landscape that gave birth to the cruel and tormented Heathcliff.
Emily
Direction: Frances O’Connor.
Actor: Emma Mackey, Adrian Dunbar, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Gemma Jones, Fionn Whitehead.
Gender: Theatre. United Kingdom, 2002.
Duration: 130 minutes.
Release date: January 13th.
All the culture that suits you awaits you here.
Subscribe to
Babelia
The literary novelties analyzed by our best critics in our weekly bulletin
GET IT
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits