Modern Classic: Emily (Frances O’Connor, 2022)

Emily is an intense and immersive film about the life of Emily Brontë, who became world famous for her only novel Wuthering Heights.

However, you can’t really call Emily a biopic in the traditional sense of the word. Apart from the most basic facts, there is simply too little known about her life.

Most of what we do know comes from the stories of her older sister Charlotte, but they are so personal that they are not considered truly reliable by literary scholars.

Actress turned director and screenwriter Frances O'Connor also likes to play fast and loose with the few facts that are known.

For example, unlike in the film, Charlotte's Jane Eyre was published before Wuthering Heights. Also, it was youngest sister Anne (and not Emily) who most likely had an affair - if her own novel Agnes Grey is to be believed - with the curate William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who came to live with the Brontë family in Haworth.

But that doesn't matter at all. O'Connor has given free rein to her imagination and made a film that will not only appeal to fans of costume drama, but also to a younger generation who mainly know leading lady Emma Mackey from the popular Netflix series Sex Education.

At first glance, her face may seem a bit too modern for a historical character who lived in the first half of the nineteenth century. But her movie star charisma is undeniable.

Mackey also has the kind of face that conveys all emotions. The highs but also the lows, including her feelings of gloom and possible depression.

It is telling that Emily was called 'The strange one' by her sister and the people of the village, while at the same time she was the one of the family most tied to hearth and home, because she often fell prey to panic attacks when she stepped outside her comfort zone.

O'Connor surrounds her star with some fantastic actors, of whom Fionn Whitehead steals the show as the rebellious brother Bronwell.

Camera work, costumes and art direction are of a high standard, with the preference for autumnal tones fitting well with the rainy Yorkshire landscape.

We will probably never know how Emily really got the inspiration for her masterpiece. But Frances O'Connor's film makes it impressively clear that she had the book in her.

Note: Emily is available to watch via various streaming services like Prime Video, Apple TV and Google Play.