emily movie review 2023

“If I could I would work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.” — Emily Brontë

Her wish came to pass. Wuthering Heights is a book for the ages, and her poetry (unlike her sisters’), still lifts off the page with bleak despairing imagery and a ferocious independence of tone. Her most famous poems— No Coward Soul is Mine (which Emily Dickinson apparently asked to have read at her funeral) and Remembrance —are regularly anthologized. I encountered Often Rebuked in high school, and the following lines helped me get through those sometimes rocky years.

I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide.

Words to live by, and Emily lived by them in her tragically short life. But what do we know about her, really? Charlotte described her as “a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove.” Emily rarely left home (and when she did leave home, it usually ended badly). This means we don’t have a voluminous correspondence from Emily in the way we have from Charlotte, who went away to school and work, writing multiple letters a day. Much of what we know about Emily comes from Charlotte, the sole surviving sibling after the catastrophic one-year period (1848-1849), where sisters Anne and Emily and brother Branwell all died. Given the spotty record, speculation about what might have been going on fills the void. Frances O'Connor ‘s “Emily” engages in some really wild speculations, some of which I’ve heard, others which are new to me, but it’s all in an attempt to get close to the most mysterious Brontë, not just as a person but as an artist.

In this, O'Connor has a perfect partner in Emma Mackey , who plays Emily with sensitivity and freedom. She’s not held back by an imposed “conception” of this woman. She’s let loose. Her Emily is joyous, sulky, troubled, paralyzed with anxiety, rebellious, and passionate. There’s reason to believe all of this is true. The local villagers referred to Emily as “the strange one,” and without overplaying it, Mackey suggests why. She can’t make eye contact with people. She shrinks from interactions with non-family members. When Michael Weightman ( Oliver Jackson-Cohen ), Mr. Brontë’s new assistant curate, enters the family circle, he disturbs the waters. His sermons are the opposite of Mr. Brontë’s fire-and-brimstone declarations. Weightman speaks of a gentle, almost thoughtful God. The Brontë sisters listen enraptured, and they also can’t fail to notice he’s easy on the eyes. Emily responds to him combatively, at first, poking holes in his arguments, refusing to concede ground. Naturally, he’s drawn to her the most.

There are a number of extraordinary sequences, speculative in nature, but which make so much sense thematically and emotionally. “Emily” goes deep. (Surface events are minimal, anyway. A similar issue arises with Emily Dickinson, whose life was not crowded with outer events. But look to “the results.” It’s possible to never leave home and live a dramatic inner life. This is what Frances O’Connor explores wonderfully well.) There’s a scene where Emily, goofing around with her siblings and Weightman, puts on a ceramic mask. At first, it’s part of a game until Emily transforms, the mask providing her the anonymity necessary to express the grief beneath the surface, all as a storm rises outside. The scene is an incredible work of imagination, anchored in what we already know and what we can guess at, considering Wuthering Heights . It evokes—without underlining the connection—the book’s terrifying opening scene, with the ghost rattling at the window frame, imploring to be allowed inside out of the storm.

The relationships are all in flux. Sister Charlotte ( Alexandra Dowling ) looks at wild Emily with concern. Sister Anne ( Amelia Gething ) is an ally at first but eventually moves out of reach. This leaves Branwell ( Fionn Whitehead ). One can only imagine what it must have been like to be the only brother to these three majestic Weird Sisters. He had an artistic sensibility but lacked drive and discipline. He led a dissipated scandalous life. The relationship between Emily and Branwell is the heart of the film—the two rebels supporting each other, for better or worse, shared by the mirroring relationship between Emily and Weightman.

What “Emily” does so well is establish a mood. The mood is flexible enough to contain multitudes. Nanu Segal’s cinematography is sparked with energy and drive. There are times when the camera hurtles through the rooms or across the fields, chasing after Emily, careening around corners, almost like it’s going to crash into a wall. The romantic scenes between Emily and Weightman shiver with a passion so forbidden—and so foreign to Emily—you worry for her. You know the end. “Emily” takes place before the sisters all started getting published. But work is growing in them.

The question has dogged critics for two centuries now: How on earth could a woman who grew up in virtual isolation come up with a story as feral as Wuthering Heights ? Jane Eyre has its madness (Mr. Rochester dressing in drag! The lunatic woman trapped in the attic! Mr. Rochester calling to Jane across the space-time continuum!), but Wuthering Heights makes Jane Eyre look tame. Wuthering Heights takes place in a world of godless chaos. Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote of the book in 1854, “The action is laid in Hell—only it seems places and people have English names there.” There’s nothing soft in Wuthering Heights . How could someone with no life experience think up such a story?

It’s understandable to want historical accuracy in a biopic. Critiques of whitewashing are often on point. But there are deeper concerns, ones which so many biopics dodge. Why does this person matter? Why has their art lasted? Who were they as an artist? There have been numerous biopics that are not Wikipedia pages come to life but extended meditations on the artist’s work, its impact, and the persona of the artist as an artist (Stanley Kwan’s “Center Stage,” Bill Pohlad’s “ Love & Mercy ,” Madeleine Olnek’s “ Wild Nights with Emily ,” Todd Haynes’ “ I'm Not There ,” to name just a recent few). There have been charges of historical inaccuracy thrown at “Emily.” (The ending of the recent “ Corsage ” is a fascinating example of total lack of historical accuracy. It didn’t happen that way at all. But what does it provide us imaginatively, speculatively, about the Empress?) It’s long been thought that Anne was the one in love with Weightman, that something happened between them. People point to passages in her novel that seem to correspond. That’s fine. It’s possible. But it’s still just speculation. What if it were Emily?

We’ll never know why Branwell painted himself out of the portrait he did of his three sisters, creating the strange effect of a golden pillar of Branwell-shaped flame between Emily and Charlotte. We don’t know if he even did paint himself out. Maybe he didn’t paint himself out at all, maybe he painted his sisters over another work. Maybe we’re way off about all of it. We weren’t there. But guessing is how we get closer to what matters: Who was Emily? How did she make sense of life? How did this go into her work? We know Emily by her results. The rest is silence. And imaginative leaps like Frances O’Connor’s “Emily.”

Now playing in theaters.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O’Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master’s in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

Emma Mackey as Emily Brontë
Fionn Whitehead as Branwell Brontë
Oliver Jackson-Cohen as William Weightman
Alexandra Dowling as Charlotte Brontë
Gemma Jones as Aunt Branwell
Adrian Dunbar as Patrick Brontë
Amelia Gething as Anne Brontë
Abel Korzeniowski
Frances O’Connor

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‘Emily’ Review: A Brontë Sister’s Savage, Hardy and Free Life

Blending fact with generous, liberating fiction, the director Frances O’Connor brings the author of “Wuthering Heights” to pleasurable life.

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Emma Mackey in black period dress in a scene from the film, writing with a quill by candlelight.

By Manohla Dargis

Recluse, genius, rebel, muse — a multitude of Emily Brontës crowd the cultural imagination. She was kind, cruel, reserved and wild. Her eyes were gray, though sometimes blue, if perhaps gray-blue or hazel. Her sister Charlotte wrote that Emily, who knew French and German, played Beethoven on the piano, studied in Brussels and, well, wrote “Wuthering Heights,” was a “homebred country girl” with “no worldly wisdom.” Yet Charlotte also wrote that Emily had “a secret power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero.”

That there is no consensus Emily Brontë — who left behind one novel, some 200 poems , several essays and much mystery when she died at 30 in 1848 — has proved liberating for the writer-director Frances O’Connor. Her “Emily” is a confident directorial debut and an enjoyably irreverent take on Brontë, one that builds on the scant historical record to construct an imaginary, at times wishful portrait of the artist. Despite its attention to the past, the movie isn’t an exercise in futile authenticity or a dreary compendium of biopic banalities. It is instead an expression of O’Connor’s love for — and desire to understand — her elusive subject.

In detail and sweep, “Emily” nevertheless shares many of the handsome, cozily inviting essentials of a standard biographical work-up. It was shot in Yorkshire, the northern English county where Brontë lived most of her life, and features the frocks, pretty bonnets, candlelit rooms and horse-drawn carriages of the era. There’s a somber stone home where Emily — a mercurial, mesmerizing Emma Mackey — and her tightknit family work and dream. And naturally there are the moors that, with their peaks, valleys and undulating grasses changing colors with the moody sky, make a suitably dramatic backdrop for transcendental reveries.

After a brief preface, the story proper opens with Emily on the moors, lying on the ground and idly stroking the grass as she talks to herself. She’s narrating a romantic dialogue between a “Captain Sneaky” and an unnamed woman — an apparent reference to the elaborate adventure tales that the Brontë children invented — the faint sounds of military music and soldiers blending in with birdsong and the lightly stirring wind. It’s a smart, seductive introduction that nicely sets the tone and mood, establishing Emily’s creativity and her contented solitude. She’s clearly at home in nature and with herself, but she’s also presently on the move, racing across the moors and into O’Connor’s adventure.

Working briskly, O’Connor sketches in Emily’s world with pictorial beauty, economic scenes, naturalistic conversations, meaningful silences and ricocheting gazes. “Is it nice having friends outside the family?” Emily is soon asking of Charlotte (a tart Alexandra Dowling), who has briefly returned from the boarding school where Emily will study, too, disastrously in her case. Charlotte laughs, replying “of course,” but she also scolds Emily for her fantasies and tries to rein her in, creating a tense dynamic that trembles through the movie. Like Emily, Charlotte has her own stories, including, in time, “Jane Eyre,” but for the most part the role she plays in this story, fairly or not, is that of the obedient, pinched scold.

O’Connor, an actress who’s played her share of period heroines, starred in the 1999 adaptation of Jane Austen’s “ Mansfield Park ,” a film that — like this one — takes a frisky approach to its source material. O’Connor’s most radical move here is to create a swoony romance for Emily, which begins the moment she lays eyes on William Weightman (a very fine Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a gravely serious young curate with an amusingly flirty forelock. (His eyes say no; his unruly hair says otherwise.) Brought in to help the Brontë paterfamilias, a reverend, Patrick (Adrian Dunbar), William immediately stirs up the congregation, eliciting fluttering coos and stares. He’s also enlisted to help Emily with her French. The lessons heat up quickly.

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Review: Wuther true or false, ‘Emily’ weaves a passionate portrait of a Brontë sister

A woman in 19th century garb in the movie "Emily."

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“Wuthering Heights” was first published in 1847 under the name Ellis Bell — a pseudonym for Emily Brontë, of course, and one that she adopted in tandem with her sisters Charlotte and Anne, in their individual novels as well as a book of poetry. “Jane Eyre” was published under Currer Bell; “Agnes Grey,” printed in the same three-volume set as “Wuthering Heights,” was attributed to Acton Bell. The Brontë sisters’ names and reputations would be established soon enough, but their use of male aliases was a not-uncommon safeguard in an era when female writers struggled to be taken seriously.

“Emily,” a passionate and imaginative new drama about the author’s short life and enduring work, deftly waves aside this and many other details: When we see Emily (a superb Emma Mackey) cracking open the first edition of her one and only novel, it proudly bears her actual name. Whether this is an act of feminist reclamation or simply an expository shortcut, it suits a movie that delights in hurling caution and historical fidelity to the Yorkshire wind. Written and directed by the Australian actor Frances O’Connor, making a vibrant feature filmmaking debut, it will surely madden sticklers for accuracy, which is all to the good. Those who demand strict conformity, at least in this absorbing and unapologetic fiction, are precisely the kind of people the fiercely independent-minded Emily can barely stand.

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The list of people she can stand is admittedly a short one. It would include her younger sister, Anne (Amelia Gething), gentle, kind and possessed of literary gifts that go sadly unexplored here, and their brother, Branwell (an excellent Fionn Whitehead), whose own wild artistic temperament and gregarious spirit are gradually subsumed by alcoholism and opium addiction. Less tolerable but still grudgingly granted a place in Emily’s affections is her older sister, Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), who’s prim and well behaved in all the ways that Emily is withdrawn and rebellious. Charlotte is studying to be a teacher and urges Emily to do the same, the better to please their father, Patrick (Adrian Dunbar), a rector in their home village of Haworth.

A woman in 19th century dress in the movie "Emily."

But the Brontë sisters’ true talent is for writing poetry and fiction, and “Emily,” which begins in bitterness and sorrow but ends in grace, is very much about the triumphant unstifling of that gift. In contrast with earlier portraits of the Brontë trio like “Devotion” (1946), which starred Ida Lupino as Emily and Olivia de Havilland as Charlotte, or André Téchiné’s French-language “The Brontë Sisters” (1979), it singles out Emily as the driving force in a movie rife with artistic potential. It’s Emily who refuses to relinquish the childhood stories that so captivated their youthful imaginations, even after Charlotte and Anne have long moved on. Preferring her fictional characters to any outside company, she retreats into a creative and social cocoon.

As Charlotte furiously informs her early on, the town gossips refer to Emily as “the Strange One.” And the movie, casting its heroine in a light at once sympathetic and fearsome, does not entirely dispute this characterization. Strangeness becomes Emily, and it also suits Mackey (“Sex Education,” “Death on the Nile” ), who has the kind of flinty, strikingly modern gaze that was made to cut through pretensions and pieties.

The camera (wielded by director of photography Nanu Segal) has an unnerving habit of locking Emily center frame, allowing her and us no escape. Seated quietly in a pew at church, her dark hair concealed by a bonnet and her eyes cast downward, she affects a posture suggestive less of prayer than of defiance. Freely wandering the wind-battered moors, her eyes taking in her surroundings and her hair now flowing past her shoulders, she is a woman liberated, wholly if momentarily at one with a gloriously untamed world.

O’Connor, an actor who’s chafed against corsets herself in such films as “Mansfield Park” (1999), is to some extent making a stealth adaptation of the already much-adapted “Wuthering Heights,” insofar as “Emily” is a (mostly) subtle record of that novel’s inspirations. The air is charged with melodrama and even a touch of madness. The candlelight flickers menacingly within the house’s shadowy interiors (sparely appointed by production designer Steve Summersgill). Emily’s fascination with death — and, more specifically, with her mother’s untimely passing years earlier — turns a tense family drama into a brooding Victorian ghost story, set to the operatic churn of Abel Korzeniowski’s score.

Two women in bonnets and 19th century dress in the movie "Emily."

But it is also, by necessity, a thrillingly ill-fated romance, something that seems inevitable the moment a dashing young curate, William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), sets foot in the Brontës’ parish. William’s own poetic gifts and not-inconsiderable good looks quickly set Charlotte’s and Anne’s hearts aflutter, though the skeptical Emily initially regards him more or less as Lizzie Bennett did Mr. Darcy. We know how that turned out, and once William begins tutoring Emily in French — never the best distraction from those pesky latent desires — it isn’t long before they’ve surrendered to a love beyond verbs, seen in a flurry of rumpled sheets and writhing limbs.

Even without that playfully bawdy montage, Brontë historians would likely object most strongly to this particular narrative liberty, armed with the widespread belief that it was Anne Brontë, not Emily, who was the object of Weightman’s affections. To these eyes, however, the potential problem has less to do with historical inaccuracy than artistic reductiveness. “Write what you know” is splendid advice, but it can also perpetuate an unfortunate canard, namely that great literary accomplishment can be born only of direct, autobiographical experience.

Two men in 19th century clothing in the movie "Emily."

“Emily” may not entirely escape this assumption, though the intensity of Emily and William’s bond — which is to say, the heat and conviction that Mackey and Jackson-Cohen bring to their performances — is its own vindication. And O’Connor is shrewd enough to root the emotional core of “Wuthering Heights” in more than just a torrid speculative romance. If William is the Heathcliff to Emily’s Cathy, then so, in his way, is Branwell, something the movie establishes with early scenes of brother and sister mischievously spying on their neighbors. The intensity of their love, and of their shared alienation from their family and the outside world, is its own force of nature, even when Branwell commits an act of sibling betrayal that falls far short of brothering heights.

The tension and resilience of sibling bonds is crucial to the meaning of “Emily,” which may isolate and elevate its heroine but ultimately restores her to a place of intimacy within a family she loved and inspired. Her alternately tense and tender rapport with Charlotte, whom Dowling invests with intricate layers of disdain and sympathy, is especially moving in that regard. At one point, Charlotte cruelly dismisses “Wuthering Heights” as “an ugly book … full of selfish people who only care for themselves.” It’s another liberty; the real-life Charlotte, though a frequent critic and arbiter of her sisters’ published work, was hardly blind to the beauty of Emily’s masterpiece. The same can be said of O’Connor’s movie. Far from suggesting that art imitated life, it ends with the bracing suggestion that the Brontës, like any of us, could scarcely appreciate one without the other.

In English and French with English subtitles Rating: R, for some sexuality/nudity and drug use Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes Playing: Starts Feb. 17 at AMC the Grove 14, Los Angeles, and AMC Century City 15

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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'Emily' imagines Brontë before 'Wuthering Heights'

Justin Chang

Emily speculates about the life of the 19th-century English writer Emily Jane Brontë (Emma Mackey) in the years before she wrote Wuthering Heights. Bleecker Street hide caption

Emily speculates about the life of the 19th-century English writer Emily Jane Brontë (Emma Mackey) in the years before she wrote Wuthering Heights.

Given that there are few activities less inherently cinematic than writing, I'm surprised and heartened by how many good movies I've seen in recent years that have convincingly entered the lives and minds of authors. I'm thinking of A Quiet Passion , the Emily Dickinson biopic, and Shirley , about The Haunting of Hill House author Shirley Jackson. You don't spend a lot of time watching these women scribbling with their quills or banging away at their typewriters, but you do get a rich sense of how their artistic sensibilities came into being.

The latest fine addition to this group is Emily , which freely speculates about the life of the 19th-century English writer Emily Jane Brontë in the years before she would write her one and only novel, Wuthering Heights . The movie takes significant liberties with what is known about Emily and her famous sisters, Charlotte and Anne, but as a non-stickler for biopic accuracy, I didn't mind. True or false or somewhere in between, this is an engagingly detailed and emotionally truthful portrait of a family of artists. Every character and actor leaves a vivid impression.

Book Reviews

In 'the brontes,' details of a family's strange world.

Emily is strikingly played by Emma Mackey, the French-British actor known for her work on the series Sex Education ; she was also the best thing in the recent remake of Death on the Nile . Mackey has the kind of searing gaze that cuts right through any period-piece decorum, and that makes her perfect for the sardonic, self-amused Emily. She's neither as sweet as her younger sister, Anne, nor as well behaved as her older sister, Charlotte, who's memorably played by Alexandra Dowling. Charlotte is studying to be a teacher and wants Emily to do the same, mainly to please their strict clergyman father.

But Emily's natural talent is for inventing stories and writing poetry, and also for speaking her mind with a boldness that leaves others unsettled. There's a dark side to Emily, and it emerges whenever she mentions her mother's long-ago death, something the others don't like to talk about.

Book News & Features

Small book, big story: bronte manuscript discovered.

Of all her siblings, Emily is probably closest to her fellow-misfit brother, Branwell, an aspiring painter played by Fionn Whitehead. Their bond becomes even stronger after Branwell drops out of art school and sinks into alcoholism and opium addiction. One day, while they're walking the Yorkshire moors, she notices three words inked on his arm: "Freedom in thought" — a creed that also becomes her own.

And so Emily tells a familiar but compelling story of a woman rebelling against the expectations of her religious and image-conscious family. In her biggest breach of convention, she falls into a torrid romance with William Weightman, the handsome young curate who assists her father in his church duties.

Emily and William, played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, initially loathe each other, which makes it all the more affecting when they surrender to their passion. Their affair is clearly laying the narrative framework for the forbidden love between Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights .

That idea might sound overly simplistic, especially if, like me, you chafe at the notion that great art can only emerge from direct autobiographical experience. But even if the movie plays hard and loose with the facts — some have speculated that there was a romantic connection between Anne Brontë and William Weightman — Mackey and Jackson-Cohen bring so much heat and conviction that their love story sweeps you up in its wake.

But as magnetic as Emily and William are together, their bond isn't the only one of note here. I've rarely seen a movie this attuned to the emotional complexity of sibling relationships, especially between Charlotte and Emily, whose mutual exasperation never obscures the depths of their sisterly love.

Emily marks an excellent writing and directing debut for the actor Frances O'Connor, who's appeared in her own share of English literary adaptations like Mansfield Park and The Importance of Being Earnest . Her witty but unfussy script is rife with echoes of Wuthering Heights , which means it often plays like a ghost story. Much of the movie is set in dim, candlelit interiors, including one terrifying scene in which an innocent game among the Brontë siblings becomes a disturbing kind of séance. O'Connor keeps her camera tightly fixed on Emily even at her most anguished moments, when she seems to be teetering on the brink of madness. Maybe she is. But maybe it takes a little madness to create a work of art, including a movie as good as this one.

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Emily Reviews

Emily is the kind of film that reminds me why I love cinema, a movie that has been created with the intention and desire to be released on the big screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 3, 2024

In the midst of the impressive gale of feelings and stylistic brouhaha conjured up by O’Connor stands Mackey, Emily‘s pillar of strength.

Full Review | Feb 8, 2024

Frances O’Connor’s stunning debut finds poignant truths in speculation.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2023

Forlorn silences, haunting visuals, and awkward touches and glances make Emily a wonderful interpretation, if not, a reimagining of the beloved novelist’s life.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 8, 2023

Anchored by Emma Mackey's superb performance as the woman in question, the richly fictionalised tale acquaints viewers with the suffocated identity of a repressed young writer battling to take charge of her own story.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 8, 2023

Emma Mackey is a stellar presence that does her best to hold all the details of this story together, especially in a fantastic seance sequence, but leading her into a forbidden Jane Austen like romance instead of her creativity cheats her real-life figure

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 31, 2023

It’s a thoughtful movie crowded with quiet confessions in a room full of people, the perils of intimacy, the heartbreaks that stay and linger, and the many difficulties women face, especially when misunderstood.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 20, 2023

Whether you’ve read it or not doesn’t matter anyway; the film is about the woman, not her novel and Emily is a bold introduction to the writer.

Full Review | Apr 1, 2023

Emily Brontë is one of the most uniquely brilliant women writers who ever lived, the perfect subject for a feminist biopic. She deserves better than the shallow pop feminism of the new movie Emily.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2023

"Emily” has an engaging energy that may belie the era in which it's set, but it’s certainly enjoyable. There’s an intensity that we don’t often experience in today’s homogenized movies. It’s about a woman committed to her own understanding of freedom.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2023

With its charismatic stars, its subject's name recognition and just damn good moviemaking, it's a shame the film is flying under the radar.

Full Review | Mar 16, 2023

Despite strong visual appeal and a star performance from Emma Mackey this rendering of the Brontë family saga gets almost everything wrong.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 8, 2023

A well-researched & atmospheric speculative biopic of Emily Brontë with the exquisite Emma Mackey in the title role. There's certainly an eerie gothic touch that's in line with 'Wuthering Heights.'

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 7, 2023

I was disappointed. This is is very fan-fictiony. The Greatest Showman of Emily Bronte movies

Full Review | Mar 3, 2023

If one does not look to Emily to adhere too faithfully to historical truth or, indeed, to depict what actual writing is like, then it is a satisfying—or at least benign—story.

Emma Mackey is a clear standout in an incredibly demanding role, and together with O'Connor, puts together a dynamic, intriguing character study of an author who has so often been defined solely by her creative works.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Mar 3, 2023

“Emily” is an atmospheric flight of fancy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 3, 2023

Acting is intense, especially by Emma Mackey as Emily.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 2, 2023

Despite some occasional missteps of mood and underdeveloped subtexts, Emily traverses this vision of liberation with enormous sensitivity and daring.

Full Review | Mar 2, 2023

Emily takes great literary works and places them in surface of a standard romance-novel weeper with a pretentious NPR gloss.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 1, 2023

Screen Rant

Emily review: mackey soars in dreamy, gothic-inspired twist on typical biopic.

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Going into Emily , the feature debut of director Frances O'Connor, it is important to understand that the film isn't a biopic. The title character may be Emily Brontë, the author behind literary classic Wuthering Heights , but it is clear that O'Connor, who also wrote the screenplay, opted to add a fictional slant in bringing this figure to life. While some might bristle at the unconventional approach, those willing to go along for the ride will come away enchanted with the story Emily tells. In many ways, it resonates with the present day without veering into anachronisms, and it paints a fascinating portrait of a woman who existed well before today's imaginations took shape. Led by a stunning Emma Mackey, Emily is a striking depiction of a woman embracing her individuality while crafting an iconic piece of literature.

Emily starts at the end, as its eponymous heroine (Mackey) struggles to combat a deathly illness. As they wait for the doctor, Emily's sister, Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), inches close enough to ask a question that seems to have haunted her for some time: What prompted Emily to write her controversial novel, Wuthering Heights ? The film then unspools a fictional account of how Emily came to bring that perennial story to life, which, at the time of its publication, was polarizing because of its rejection of typical values. An outcast both within her family and her community at large, Emily seems to only draw comfort from her stories and her equally wayward brother, Branwell (Fionn Whitehead). However, the arrival of a new local curate, William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), sparks a new sense of discovery within Emily, one that helps her make her mark on literary history.

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Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Emma Mackey in Emily

O'Connor crafts Emily as almost a dreamy ghost story. From Abel Korzeniowski's score, that is at turns lively and haunting, to gorgeous landscape shots of the Yorkshire moors, Emily has the makings of a Gothic novel come to life. O'Connor draws from widely speculated parts of Brontë's life to tell her enthralling tale, and this freedom works to great effect. The film may not be telling a wholly accurate life story, but instead one that fits perfectly with how Emily Brontë and her famous work is often viewed in modern culture. There are aspects to Emily's story that resonate strongly today, namely her outsider status within a society that values more conservative thinking. Emily's refusal — or perhaps inability — to fit into pre-arranged boxes will stick with any viewer who has felt they cannot fall in line with a specific kind of lifestyle. Additionally, O'Connor weaves in instances where Emily suffers from things people today can put a name to — a panic attack, for example — but was perhaps looked down upon back in the 1800s. This only serves to further connect Emily's story with the present.

O'Connor is aided by impressive work from key craftspeople, including director of photography Nanu Segal and costume designer Michael O'Connor, who offer standout contributions. Segal grants Mackey ample time to shine by letting the camera linger on her face, sometimes even centering it directly on her to catch every flicker and shift; this pulls the audience even further into Emily's orbit. At the same time, those aforementioned landscape shots fully establish the breadth of Emily's world. Michael O'Connor, meanwhile, seems to make the conscious decision of dressing Emily in darker dresses than the other women around her, subtly setting her apart. It's only when Emily makes some steps towards conforming to those desired ideals that she ventures into lighter frocks. It also helps that the costumes themselves are gorgeous.

Emily isn't without some stumbles, though. There are some key developments in the script that come a bit too fast to truly feel their impact, such as a plot point involving Branwell far enough into the film to be considered a spoiler. The speed of Emily 's resolution can dull its overall impression. Luckily, though, the film has a major advantage in Mackey. The Sex Education star throws herself into the character of Emily wholeheartedly, giving a fully committed performance that asks Mackey to be ecstatic, curious, vulnerable, and vengeful at various points. Mackey brings her Emily to life so vividly, one wishes they had the opportunity to genuinely know her. As her illicit suitor, Jackson-Cohen nails the part of a brooding romantic interest. His chemistry with Mackey lights up the screen. Whitehead also deserves praise for his performance as Emily's libertine brother; flitting between carefree antics and underlying hurt, Whitehead gives Branwell compelling depth.

Emily is a period piece that wears its modern sensibilities on its sleeve, and it thankfully pulls off that high-wire act rather well. Pacing issues aside, it is a well-crafted character study of a person who really lived, though perhaps not quite in the way the movie suggests. Historical purists might not approve of the liberties O'Connor has taken with Emily , but those more interested in a Gothic-styled film that is both a romance and a coming-of-age tale will be entranced by what this has to offer.

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Emily releases in theaters Friday, February 17. It is 130 minutes long and rated R for some sexuality/nudity and drug use.

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‘emily’ review: emma mackey excels as emily brontë in speculative biopic.

The 'Sex Education' star leads Frances O’Connor’s portrait of the most elusive Brontë sister.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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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 Height s (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.

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A Sensitive Movie About a Literary Oddity

A new film about Emily Brontë offers a fresh, provocative look at the misunderstood Wuthering Heights author.

Of the Brontë sisters, Emily has long been considered the most vexing . She was reportedly jovial around her siblings but disagreeable and timid around anyone else. Her equally tempestuous and aloof reputation left her friendless, and the novel Wuthering Heights —her bold, brutal masterpiece—incensed some readers while enthralling others. She’s a literary oddity, a creature whose reserved disposition seemed to belie a wildly inventive imagination.

In Emily , a new film about her life in theaters Friday, her difficult personality manifests as a near-paranormal force. Take an early scene, during which Emily (played by Sex Education ’s Emma Mackey) puts on a mask for a role-playing guessing game. She’s supposed to choose someone fun to perform as—say, Marie Antoinette—but instead, she channels her late mother. She speaks softly, spooking her siblings, Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), Anne (Amelia Gething), and Branwell (Fionn Whitehead). By coincidence or some inexplicable power, the winds outside pick up, the windows fling open, and the candles blow out. Her sisters cry hysterically, and Emily seems possessed, unable to remove the mask. The evening, which started in merriment, devolves into terror.

This probably never happened in the author’s short life—or maybe it did. The film’s writer-director, Frances O’Connor, told me that she’d read about how Patrick Brontë, the family patriarch, had received a mask as a wedding gift and encouraged his children to put it on from time to time for entertainment. Who knows? Perhaps Emily once embodied her mother’s ghost.

Then again, whether she did isn’t the point. Although the film traces Emily’s life leading up to the publication of Wuthering Heights , the movie isn’t a conventional biopic. There is no on-screen text informing the audience of the year being depicted, no flashbacks to her childhood, no gesturing at larger world events to contextualize her place in society. Instead, we get daring sequences that blend the natural with the supernatural, fact with fiction—a film “that kind of moves between ,” O’Connor said. She wanted to capture the spirit of Emily’s work, not the truth of her biography.

Watching Emily thus feels like reading Emily’s writing; it’s a vivid portrait of her mind that’s as romantic and haunting as Wuthering Heights . Rather than making a straightforward movie about Emily Brontë, O’Connor wanted to convey the transportive nature of the author’s classic novel. “I kind of disappeared into this world,” she recalled of reading the book for the first time at 15, absorbing the story on long commutes to classes. “I would get off the school bus in the middle of the city and really felt like I’d been somewhere.”

O’Connor’s interest in the author deepened with her poetry: “You can really feel her moving the pen across the page.” To her, Emily Brontë was a young woman who repressed her passions, someone whose creativity conflicted with who she had to be to others. “I feel like that is a common experience with a lot of women,” O’Connor said, noting the gap between “who they really are and who they have to present to the world.” Her unusually tactile film channels Emily’s heightened sensitivity. The handheld, subtly shaking camera makes the film feel as perpetually windswept as the Yorkshire moors, where Emily and her characters resided. The swelling, whooping score underlines Emily’s turbulent interiority. And the intimate soundscape picks up the rustle of every leaf and the undoing of every lace on her corset. When the new minister, William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), delivers a sermon about finding God “in the rain,” the camera zooms in on Emily’s face as the noise of raindrops crescendos.

The film, I’ve also found, shape-shifts. The first time I watched Emily , I saw it as a depiction of how love and pain were inextricably linked in her mind. Halfway in, the film invents a torrid romance between Emily and Weightman, a tragic affair that serves as a foil to Emily’s relationship with Charlotte. The sisters are shown to be incredibly close, but that closeness comes from their appreciation for and resentment of each other. But upon rewatching, I saw the film as more of a ghost story than a love story, with Emily as a specter scaring others away with her untamed thoughts.

Emily fits into the subgenre of stories that reconsider misunderstood women in history through a strikingly modern lens, including the TV series Dickinson and The Great . But O’Connor’s film never indulges in anachronistic flourishes as those titles do; there’s no Billie Eilish on the soundtrack or Gen Z dialogue in the script. In never allowing Emily access to the 21st century, Emily comes off as only more emotionally charged. The character constantly seems caught between her mundane reality and her mind, in which she’s stored her most profound feelings of lust, anger, and fear. Emily is therefore a balancing act, as O’Connor put it, “between the real and the gothic,” and an examination of how Emily’s remarkably contemporary ideas of morality, faith, and love excited and tormented her in equal measure.

Emily has already irked Brontë purists , thanks to how liberally it alters many facts about the family. In real life, Weightman was never romantically linked to Emily, Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre was published before Wuthering Heights , and Anne—poor, perennially overlooked Anne—also wrote. But O’Connor, a Brontë scholar herself who gave her cast a list of biographies to study, notes that her changes were made purposefully, to express Emily’s fierce view of her loved ones. Besides, she added, “Emily herself was kind of a provocative character.” It’s only right that a film about her challenges—and maybe even disturbs—its audience in turn.

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Parents Say 1 Review
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Common Sense Media Review

Intimate Bronte biopic has sex, themes around addiction.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 15+?

Sex scene in a barn -- no nudity, but there is thrusting. Suggestion that a char

Characters take opium on occasion. There is one character who is living with alc

Death is a prevalent theme. A parent is seen hitting their child when telling th

One use of the word "gypsy."

Any Positive Content?

A willingness to learn. Finding confidence within yourself. The joys, but also h

Emily was born into a world that favored her male counterparts. But through her

There is a lack of diversity as the film features White characters, pretty much

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Sex scene in a barn -- no nudity, but there is thrusting. Suggestion that a character performs oral sex on another. Character's nipple seen in one scene. A character has their neck kissed by someone other than their spouse.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters take opium on occasion. There is one character who is living with alcohol addiction, which leads to a slow demise. Other characters drink alcohol throughout and a character is seen smoking too.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Death is a prevalent theme. A parent is seen hitting their child when telling them off. Characters are chased by dogs in another scene. Reference to a dead parent.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

A willingness to learn. Finding confidence within yourself. The joys, but also heartbreak of love.

Positive Role Models

Emily was born into a world that favored her male counterparts. But through her own brilliance, she succeeded. She is flawed, however, and is guilty of spying on people alongside her brother. Initially introverted, she grows in confidence when she finds love.

Diverse Representations

There is a lack of diversity as the film features White characters, pretty much across the board. But the film does center on a very complex female character.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Emily is a biopic of the 19th-century English novelist Emily Bronte -- author of literary classic Wuthering Heights -- and features drugs, addiction, and sex. Bronte ( Emma Mackey ) is a strong female lead, but also complex and flawed. She's intelligent, both academically and emotionally, and succeeds in a world that favored the progress of men over women. Love is explored in all its facets; the joys of falling in love, and the sheer misery of heartbreak. The film features a few sex scenes that while featuring little to no nudity, are quite graphic. Drugs are also a prominent theme. Characters try opium and initially they are shown enjoying the effects. But soon Emily's brother, Branwell ( Fionn Whitehead ), falls deep into addiction with drugs and alcohol. There is also some smoking. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Emily: Emma Mackey as author Emily Bronte

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

What's the Story?

EMILY is a coming-of-age story of the celebrated author Emily Bronte ( Emma Mackey ), which explores her journey from shy young girl to becoming one of the most provocative minds in literature. Drawing her influences from her brother Branwell ( Fionn Whitehead ) -- who spirals into addition -- and a complex romance with a member of the church, it all leads to her celebrated novel Wuthering Heights .

Is It Any Good?

This biopic about one of Britain's most celebrated authors is an encouraging directorial debut feature from Frances O'Connor , who brings her screenplay to life in a unique, but also familiar way. Emily does feel like a classic period drama at times. But likewise it's got a naturalistic feel to it. Its handheld shaky camera and close-ups truly put you into the same room as the characters, rather than have you feel like you're merely observing from behind a pane of glass, as though at a museum -- which can often happen with this genre.

What transpires is an intimate character study. But for that to work, a strong central performance is required. Thankfully Mackey more than delivers. She brings vulnerability as well as a mischief to the role. We get a sense for the writer's fallibility, but also the sharp and witty mind that lives within. The film could have perhaps had a more deft editing job, with the middle act waining somewhat. But the strength of the performances keep the audience engaged.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Emily portrayed sex . Was it affectionate? Respectful? Parents, talk to your teens about your own values regarding sex and relationships.

Talk about the character of Emily. What were her strengths ? What were her flaws? Did she feel like a realistic character?

Were you familiar with Emily Bronte's works? Has this inspired you to learn more and read her writings?

Talk about the alcohol and drug use in the film. How was addiction portrayed? Were there consequences to the substance abuse? Why is that important?

Movie Details

In theaters : February 17, 2023
On DVD or streaming : April 18, 2023
Cast : Emma Mackey , Oliver Jackson-Cohen , Fionn Whitehead
Director : Frances O'Connor
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Middle Eastern/North African actors
Studio : Bleecker Street
Genre : Drama
Topics : Brothers and Sisters , Great Girl Role Models , History
Character Strengths : Curiosity , Perseverance
Run time : 130 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : some sexuality/nudity and drug use
Last updated : July 21, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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‘Emily' Review: Emma Mackey Glows in Frances O’Connor's Love Letter to Emily Brontë

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There’s a very good chance that you’ve crossed paths with the literary legends that are the Brontë sisters at some point during your academic career. Their work is synonymous with required reading lists and by default, might also be synonymous with an eye roll. Regardless, their work earns its highly respected places in literary history. The more famous and far more prolific sister, Charlotte, wrote Jane Eyre , arguably one of the most famous pieces of literature ever. As you might deduce from the film in question’s title, Emily is not a story about that sister.

As a self-proclaimed literature lover, the idea of a movie about the lesser-known, more mysterious Brontë was incredibly intriguing, and it’s clear that writer-director Frances O’Connor thought so, too. She wanted to tell the story of a young woman who didn’t feel like her story was worth telling. Aside from the fact that she wrote the famous Gothic novel Wuthering Heights , very little is known about Emily Brontë . O’Connor saw this lack of information not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity to figure out the kind of person Emily might have been by interpreting her work. This means the film is more closely aligned with fiction than a biopic. For the origin story purists out there, this might be a bit irritating, but it actually feels like the proper and more entertaining way to honor and explore the life of such an enigmatic figure.

The film’s opening scene is very deliberate as it starts at the debilitating end of the author’s life. At just 30 years old, Emily ( Emma Mackey ) was dying from tuberculosis. But it’s in her final few moments that the rebellious side she’s been told to suppress emerges and her complicated dynamic with her sisters is on full display. She had just finished writing Wuthering Heights —her first and only novel—and her protective yet judgmental sister Charlotte ( Alexandra Dowling ) is desperate for answers. “How did you write it?” she asks in a quivering voice. “I took my pen and put it to paper,” a severely ill Emily sharply responds, much to her sister’s agitation.

Emma Mackey as Emily reading in the field in Emily (2023)

RELATED: In Francis O'Connor's 'Emily,' What's Fact and What's Fiction?

Charlotte’s voice is laced with disdain—not curiosity—when she questions her sister’s intentions. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that your sister could write something of merit?” Emily retorts. Deeply disturbed by her sister for writing such a scandalous story, Charlotte can’t help but exclaim, “It’s an ugly book. It’s base, and ugly, and full of selfish people who only care for themselves!” Emily’s response? “Good.” This exchange in Emily’s final moments speaks volumes about her life and sets the somber tone for the story that is about to unfold. It’s a heartbreaking way to start the film, but an effective one, especially as we come to learn how pivotal this exchange would be for Charlotte.

Mackey, best known for playing the gives-zero-effs Maeve in Sex Education , disappears into the role of the meek yet bold, hesitant yet adventurous Emily Brontë. She holds the burden of 1840s societal and familial expectations in her bones, rarely ever cracking a smile. She really only feels compelled to do so when she’s spending time in the luscious grassy hills of the small village of Haworth in West Yorkshire England either by herself speaking the parts of different characters she’s dreamed up, or sneaking outside her comfort zone with her imaginative brother Branwell ( Fionn Whitehead ).

Unlike practically everyone else in her life, Branwell encourages her creativity. Of course, his creative leanings are supported whereas Emily is literally dubbed “the strange one.” Charlotte shamelessly insults her sister and attempts to dissuade her from pursuing writing, which would prove to be incredibly ironic. Early on, we meet the biggest oppressive force in Emily’s life: her callous father Reverend Patrick ( Adrian Dunbar ). Hardened by the death of his wife and being a single parent raising four children ( Amelia Gething plays Emily’s more cheerful sister Anne), Patrick is fixated on what he deems an appropriate education and tending to his congregation. Charlotte, visiting from school and eyeing up graduation, returns home to praise from their hard-to-impress father.

News of Charlotte’s friend Ellen ( Sacha Parkinson ) staying with them plus the addition of William Weightman ( Oliver Jackson-Cohen ), Patrick’s assistant priest, is sensory overload for Emily. Unlike her sisters who salivate at the sight of the charming new curate, Emily is harder to impress. She’s frustrated by her sisters’ inauthentic behavior, as they light up with smiles and dish out compliments to William when he enters a room, yet criticize his sermons when he’s out of earshot. “But any man can speak. What I want to know is, can he actually do, ” Emily boldly asks. Adding to this frustration is the fact that Patrick assigned William to tutor Emily in French.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, this friction between Emily and William blossoms into an intense and passionate love affair. The movie quickly takes the form of a romance as the two sneak off to the remote parts of the countryside to meet up. What is surprising, however, is the film’s depiction of Emily’s writing journey. Given that Wuthering Heights was the topic of discussion on her deathbed in the opening scene and is really the only work she is known for, it was interesting how her relationship with writing seemed to take a backseat to her relationships with her siblings and William.

Granted, Emily uses these relationships—especially the one with William—as inspiration for the core story of Wuthering Heights , which is about the tragic and forbidden relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. That being said, the story craved more attention to Emily’s love-hate relationship with writing. The love she has for creating characters and scenarios is pure and contagious, and emphasized with warm hues when she is lying in bed with her sister talking about the craft. William’s extreme reaction when he realizes the paper he was reading was Emily’s poetic writing (he quite literally drops it on the floor in shame) is a great indication of how women's writing was received during the time. But aside from these sweet and small moments peppered throughout the film, and a charming tease toward the end of Emily finally putting quill to paper, the "writing" of it all felt a bit like an afterthought.

The detailed production design and the homage to the titular character’s deep appreciation of nature are two of Emily ’s strengths. The inclusion of and focus on the mysterious porcelain mask that the family was gifted in real life is also something Brontë admirers will recognize and appreciate. The power that a figurative and literal disguise can have over you—for better or worse—is explored in a very artistically satisfying way. Elements of the supernatural are briefly touched upon in a visually potent scene when Emily wears the mask and speaks to her family and friends while channeling her late mother. Similarly, Abel Korzeniowski ’s score is beautiful and strategic. Interspersed between tense conversations Emily has with her sisters are blissful moments frolicking in nature underneath a sweeping score that never ceases to elevate the story.

Emily’s endearing bond with her brother, Branwell, is the beating heart of the film, making his increasing reliance on opium and alcohol all the more devastating. Whitehead shines as the pure and happy soul who loves nothing more than to dissect the power of storytelling while his head is in the clouds. It’s he who gives Emily the confidence to embrace her inner weird loudly and proudly. When she tells him that people think she is strange, he reminds her that everyone is strange if you look at them long enough. He convinces Emily to shed her timidity and yell “freedom in thought,” a powerful phrase that lights up a fire inside them and temporarily releases them of their woes. Branwell’s fearlessness is both his greatest strength and his Achilles heal, making him more of a cautionary tale.

Director Frances O’Connor effortlessly immerses the audience into Emily’s heart, soul, and mind in this refreshing, storybook-like origin story for a reclusive, misunderstood, and underappreciated author. Heavily influenced and inspired by Emily Brontë’s sole work, Emily is equally mysterious as it is charming as it honors the daunting and exhilarating feeling you get when you put a pen to a blank page.

Emily is in theaters now.

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"Emily" imagines the transformative, exhilarating, and uplifting journey to womanhood of a rebel and a misfit, one of the world's most famous, enigmatic, and provocative writers, who died, t... Read all "Emily" imagines the transformative, exhilarating, and uplifting journey to womanhood of a rebel and a misfit, one of the world's most famous, enigmatic, and provocative writers, who died, too soon, at age 30. "Emily" imagines the transformative, exhilarating, and uplifting journey to womanhood of a rebel and a misfit, one of the world's most famous, enigmatic, and provocative writers, who died, too soon, at age 30.

Frances O'Connor
Emma Mackey
Oliver Jackson-Cohen
Fionn Whitehead
77 User reviews
115 Critic reviews
75 Metascore
5 wins & 11 nominations

Top cast 26

Emily Brontë

William Weightman

Branwell Brontë

Charlotte Brontë

Anne Brontë

Patrick Brontë

Aunt Branwell

Reverend Miller

Ellen Nussey
Mrs Pestleman

Monsieur Heger
Sir Ralph Delaney

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Trivia Actress Frances O'Connor 's feature-film directorial debut.
Goofs A first edition of "Wuthering Heights" is shown as being attributed to Emily Brontë. It was originally published under the pen name Ellis Bell and only appeared under her real name after her death.

Emily Brontë : I do wonder though... how does God squeeze himself into all that rain? Won't he get wet?

Soundtracks Nocturne No. 2 in C Minor, H. 25 Written by John Field Performed by Elizabeth Joy Roe Courtesy of Decca Music Group Ltd Under licence from Universal Music Operations Limited

User reviews 77

Oct 14, 2022
How long is Emily? Powered by Alexa
October 14, 2022 (United Kingdom)
United Kingdom
United States
Haworth, Keighley, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, UK
Warner Bros. Discovery
Embankment Films
See more company credits at IMDbPro
£6,000,000 (estimated)
Feb 19, 2023

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours 10 minutes
Dolby Digital

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Things to do | Wuther true or false, ‘Emily’ weaves a…

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Things to do | wuther true or false, ‘emily’ weaves a passionate portrait of a bronte sister, emma mackey gives a superb performance in frances o’connor’s speculative romantic drama about the author of ‘wuthering heights’.

Bleecker Street

Emma Mackey as Emily Brontë in the movie "Emily."

Michael Wharley/Bleecker Street

Alexandra Dowling and Amelia Gething in the movie "Emily."

Emma Mackey in the movie "Emily."

Fionn Whitehead, left, and Oliver Jackson-Cohen in the movie "Emily."

Emma Mackey as Emily Brontë in the movie "Emily."

Written and directed by the Australian actor Frances O’Connor, making a vibrant feature filmmaking debut, it will surely madden sticklers for accuracy, which is all to the good. Those who demand strict conformity, at least in this absorbing and unapologetic fiction, are precisely the kind of people the fiercely independent-minded Emily can barely stand.

Less tolerable but still grudgingly granted a place in Emily’s affections is her older sister, Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), who’s prim and well behaved in all the ways that Emily is withdrawn and rebellious. Charlotte is studying to be a teacher and urges Emily to do the same, the better to please their father, Patrick (Adrian Dunbar), a rector in their home village of Haworth.

In contrast with earlier portraits of the Brontë trio like “Devotion” (1946), which starred Ida Lupino as Emily and Olivia de Havilland as Charlotte, or André Téchiné’s French-language “The Brontë Sisters” (1979), it singles out Emily as the driving force in a movie rife with artistic potential.

It’s Emily who refuses to relinquish the childhood stories that so captivated their youthful imaginations, even after Charlotte and Anne have long moved on. Preferring her fictional characters to any outside company, she retreats into a creative and social cocoon.

The air is charged with melodrama and even a touch of madness. The candlelight flickers menacingly within the house’s shadowy interiors (sparely appointed by production designer Steve Summersgill). Emily’s fascination with death — and, more specifically, with her mother’s untimely passing years earlier — turns a tense family drama into a brooding Victorian ghost story, set to the operatic churn of Abel Korzeniowski’s score.

And O’Connor is shrewd enough to root the emotional core of “Wuthering Heights” in more than just a torrid speculative romance. If William is the Heathcliff to Emily’s Cathy, then so, in his way, is Branwell, something the movie establishes with early scenes of brother and sister mischievously spying on their neighbors.

The intensity of their love, and of their shared alienation from their family and the outside world, is its own force of nature, even when Branwell commits an act of sibling betrayal that falls far short of brothering heights.

Her alternately tense and tender rapport with Charlotte, whom Dowling invests with intricate layers of disdain and sympathy, is especially moving in that regard. At one point, Charlotte cruelly dismisses “Wuthering Heights” as “an ugly book … full of selfish people who only care for themselves.” It’s another liberty; the real-life Charlotte, though a frequent critic and arbiter of her sisters’ published work, was hardly blind to the beauty of Emily’s masterpiece. The same can be said of O’Connor’s movie. Far from suggesting that art imitated life, it ends with the bracing suggestion that the Brontës, like any of us, could scarcely appreciate one without the other.

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Emma Mackey brings Wuthering Heights author Emily Brontë boldly to life in Frances O'Connor's directorial debut

By Keva York

Topic: Arts, Culture and Entertainment

Young white woman with dark hair pulled into bun wears a black neoclassical 1800s dress and sits writing at a desk with a quill

Emily Brontë was just 30 years old when she died of tuberculosis, leaving behind her magnum opus Wuthering Heights and a collection of poems. ( Supplied: Madman )

That most tempestuous English literature classic, Wuthering Heights, has been adapted countless times since it was first published, in 1847.

Emily Brontë's saga of a love so intense, so destructive as to burn all in its wake has enamoured scores of playwrights, composers, and filmmakers, and (most importantly) Kate Bush.

For her Heights-inspired directorial debut, Frances O'Connor takes a road much less travelled, opting to tell the story not of Cathy and Heathcliff but of their brilliant creator.

The Perth-raised actor-turned-filmmaker is no stranger to crafting 19th-century heroines, having first turned heads internationally with her portrayal of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park (1999), Patricia Rozema's revisionist take on Jane Austen.

O'Connor brought a spunky, strong-willed edge to her character not present in the literary original — qualities inspired by her creator's own disposition — but she has always thought of herself more of a Brontë gal, preferring the work of Emily (as well as sisters Charlotte and Anne), so "wild and passionate" , to Austen's decorous veneer.

A young white woman with dark hair dressed in 1800s attire sits being reprimanded in a chair by two old grey-haired men.

Brontë's teacher Constantin Héger described her as having "a head for logic and a capability for argument, unusual in a man, and rare indeed in a woman". ( Supplied: Madman )

As brought to life by Sex Education's Emma Mackey, Emily Brontë has a brooding, unruly streak that would likely somewhat startle Austen's Fanny, as it apparently does the local village folk — who, the maternal Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) reveals in a moment of frustration, refer to Emily as "the strange one".

She seems almost a retrofitted antecedent of prickly misfit girls like Thora Birch's Enid from slacker gem Ghost World (2001), or current Netflix darling Wednesday Addams. (There are no TikTok-worthy dance breaks in Emily, but it was surely strategic to cast Amelia Gething, one of the platform's zoomer celebs, as Anne.)

Such cool-weird teens — poring over a battered copy of Wuthering Heights at lunch, perhaps, or warbling along with the 18-year-old Bush in their bedroom — are no doubt the intended audience for O'Connor's Emily, which is as much, if not more, a coming-of-age tale as it is a hypothetical take on the novel's origins.

That there have been relatively few attempts to dramatise the life of Brontë no doubt has much to do with an ostensible dearth of, well, drama – though it was not short on tragedy, marred early on by the deaths of her mother and two elder sisters when she, Charlotte, and Anne were still children, and later by that of their troubled brother Branwell (played here by Dunkirk lead Fionn Whitehead).

White man with dark hair a slight sideburns wears elegant white 1800s blouse and black overcoat in a cobblestone street.

"I was interested in telling a story about a young woman trying to form herself and what she is is different from the people around her," O'Connor told the ABC. ( Supplied: Madman )

In all the author's 30 years — her own life cut short by tuberculosis in 1848, not long after Wuthering Heights' publication — she strayed very rarely from the Brontë family homestead in rural Yorkshire. "I am an odd fish," rues Mackey's Emily, bitterly. "If you take me away from here I dry up and fade away."

Her pronounced tendency for reclusion and privacy ensured that future biographers would have plenty of blanks to fill in.

That actually makes her an exciting candidate for biopic treatment, in this writer's opinion: The thinness of the middle Brontë sister's biography is something of a gift to the courageous filmmaker; an invitation to speculate and invent instead of merely recreate.

And Emily reveals itself to be unconcerned with total factual accuracy in the opening scene, as its heroine lies dying with her only novel beside her in three chunky tomes. They are embossed with her name – and yet, Wuthering Heights was originally circulated under the pen name Ellis Bell (like those of her sisters, carefully selected to be gender-neutral), her identity revealed only in a posthumous edition.

White woman with dark hair pulled back wears an 1800s style black dress and sits in a garden reading a letter while weeping.

"I had to let go of the idea of this being a biopic. There are no rules in this film. Once I realised that, it became so much more fun," Mackey told Vogue. ( Supplied: Madman )

O'Connor's boldest gambit, however, is the romance she fabulates for her main character — with the handsomely forelocked curate William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, The Invisible Man ), newly arrived in Haworth and set to sermonise under the auspices of the Brontë patriarch. Though Emily makes a show of being sceptical of his charms, she struggles to stifle a smile alongside her giggling sisters when reading the valentine's greetings he sends to each of them.

Theirs is a clandestine affair, born under cover of rain-lashed darkness, and depicted in a manner that is quite a bit steamier than even the least ankle-shy Victorian could have mustered.

It is by these means that O'Connor infuses her film with the kind of intrigue that is missing from the remaining traces of her subject's life.

White man with dark hair wears a black coat and stands at a wooden podium inside a church before a congregation.

"[Directing] is something I really have wanted to do for a while … I've really enjoyed being on the other side of the camera," O'Connor told the ABC. ( Supplied: Madman )

If Emily's coupling with the young curate is not entirely convincing as star-crossed, that is — I think — by design: Weightman, himself a figure drawn from real life, though his affections are thought to have been for Anne, here becomes a model for Wuthering Heights' Edgar Linton, the genteel, temperate man Cathy chooses to marry, much to Heathcliff's horror.

Brother Branwell in turn provides a partial template for the wild and incurably wilful Heathcliff. It is with Branwell that Emily roves the moors and dares, on occasion, to experiment with intoxicants; it is he who enjoins her to ignore convention in favour of pursuing her heart's desires. "Freedom in thought!" the siblings bellow together into the wind, blissfully unaware of the concept of cringe.

Freedom in thought was something that the Brontë siblings always had a great deal of. As children, they invented epic narratives set in fictional kingdoms, acting them out with the assistance of toy soldiers and composing them in miniature books. Emily in particular would continue to nourish fantasies of Gondal, the island she created with Anne, throughout her life.

A young white woman with brown hair wearing a blue regency style 1800s dress walks through windy moors.

While Wuthering Heights is considered among the greatest romance novels of all time, most biographers attest that Brontë never experienced romantic love. ( Supplied: Madman )

"How did you write Wuthering Heights?" Charlotte asks Emily, waxen-faced on her deathbed, in the film's opening scene. "There is something more – something you're hiding from me."

Brontë did in fact hide her poetry from her siblings; the idea that she could have hidden an entire relationship is a tantalising, and narratively useful, one.

And yet, it feels somehow reductive to frame the bond between Cathy and Heathcliff — one that has always struck me as supernatural more than sexual; a thirst for possession of the other that is, unlike lust, impossible to slake — as deriving from life experience.

"I took my pen and put it to paper," Emily coldly responds to Charlotte. I find this answer — literal-minded but implicitly affirming the powers of her own imagination — to be the most fascinating one.

Emily is in cinemas now.

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Recommended

Emma Mackey’s fierce, focused performance holds this loose Emily Brontë biopic together

Time Out says

Becoming Jane . Miss Potter . Dickinson. However slight the recorded romantic history of a well-known female author is, you can be sure it will become a key part of her biopic. Joining the trend now is this account of the life of Emily Brontë, which spends a chunk of its time on a romance that may not have happened. It’s well played and well written, but it’s an odd addition to a story that is remarkable even without invention: studios need to start letting spinsters be spinsters.

Debutante director Frances O’Connor, previously best known for her acting roles in the likes of Mansfield Park , shows a real feel for the texture and tenor of the Brontë sisters’ lives here as she establishes a bustling, intellectually vibrant house for the three sisters – Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), Emily (Emma Mackey) and Anne (Amelia Gething) – their brother Branwell ( Dunkirk ’s Fionn Whitehead) and vicar father Patrick (Adrian Dunbar). Our heroine, Emily, spends her time out on the moors dreaming up new stories and struggles to limit herself to the role available to her in 19th century society. Enter William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), the vicarage’s new curate.

The love story that follows is delicately played by both. O’Connor just manages to step around the tropes of the genre as the two young intellectuals move from vague hostility to true connection. Nanu Segal’s cinematography backs them up, switching from colours of rain and heather to sun and wind, bringing a sense of change and hope. Sure, the affair doesn’t sit entirely comfortably with the known facts of the rest of Emily’s life, and isn’t necessary to explain how this fiery woman wrote such a passionate book, but as a piece of screen fantasy it has real emotional impact.

Studios need to start letting spinsters be spinsters

The film is strongest, however, when it focuses on this odd little family and their extraordinary achievements – on the competition and support between the siblings, and all their kindnesses and cruelties. That’s the environment that made Emily Brontë who she was and helped her write what she did, and that is fascinating to see brought to life.

In US theaters Feb 17, 2023

Cast and crew

Director: Frances O'Connor
Screenwriter: Frances O'Connor
Adrian Dunbar
Emma Mackey
Gemma Jones
Fionn Whitehead
Alexandra Dowling

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DVD & Streaming
Biography/History , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

February 17, 2023
Emma Mackey as Emily Brontë; Oliver Jackson-Cohen as William Weightman; Fionn Whitehead as Branwell Brontë; Alexandra Dowling as Charlotte Brontë; Amelia Gething as Anne Brontë; Adrian Dunbar as Patrick Brontë

Home Release Date

April 18, 2023
Frances O'Connor

Distributor

Bleeker Street Films

Movie Review

Unlike her sweet sister Charlotte, Emily Brontë was never good at social gatherings. In fact, she really has never been good at people , truth be told. When Charlotte acquired a teaching position and they both went away to school, Emily found herself so overwhelmed that she walled herself up in her room. Soon after, she returned to the reclusiveness of her parent’s home.

So Charlotte found it something of a surprise when Emily began writing insightful and poignant poetry sometime later. And then she wrote a book—published under a male pseudonym—called Wuthering Heights . A fairly controversial book about morality and the human condition.

How did that come from dour little Emily?

What Charlotte and other family members never realized, however, was that Emily was not some static thing sitting in a corner. She could and can grow. She can change. She may not enjoy swarms of people, with their empty discussions and dissembling faces, but she isn’t empty herself.

She feels things. Desires things.

One of those things is William Weightman, a handsome young curate from the local church. When he first arrived, Emily could barely endure him and his flitting butterfly flirtations with every young woman in his public sphere. His beautiful eyes. His smile.

But that changed one intemperate night when she and he were caught in the pelting rain and took shelter in an empty, dilapidated cottage.

Disdain, on both their parts, began to shift that night. Feelings emerged. Godly instruction was pushed aside. A touch became a caress. A caress became … so much more.

But love is more than simply sweet ecstasies. Love is also pain.

All those dark sides of love can bring more change than one might ever imagine. Imagined or not, however, one can write of that change. One can put pen to paper and express that darkness.

And that is something Emily Brontë is very good at.

Positive Elements

As Emily’s story unfolds, we see that she is much more imaginative than many give her credit for. She talks through her made up stories when she’s alone, playing each of the characters in turn. We hear that this is something that she and her younger sister, Anne, loved doing. But Anne pulls away from the practice when she’s told that it’s childish.

Emily and her siblings clearly love one another. But their poor choices (and sometimes unhealthy interactions) end up hurting nearly all of them. The youngest Brontë sister, Anne, is seemingly the only exception.

Looked at from a certain perspective, the portrayal of Emily Brontë’s life in this film could be seen as a cautionary tale decrying lies and the selfish mistreatment of others.

Spiritual Elements

William gives a brief sermon at church, speaking about how he feels connected to others who, like him, pause to listen to the rain hit their roof. “God is in the rain,” he notes poetically. Emily, however, reacts negatively to Williams attempt at eloquence. “How does God squeeze Himself into all that rain,” she asks.

During a party game at a dinner play, Emily dons the proffered mask and begins talking as her dead mother. The portrayal is so eerily believable that Emily’s sisters and brother begin weeping and emotionally expressing their love to their lost mother. William, on the other hand, finds the ghostly performance to be shameful. We learn that the mask used during the game was a gift to Emily’s mother on her wedding day. Further, the family’s children had long used it to portray biblical characters and characters from Shakespeare.

Emily debates blind obedience to God’s word with William. “If God intended us not to think, he would not have given us a brain,” she declares. Later, as their affair comes to light among family members, William selfishly uses his “faith” as a reason to cover up their sin and lie about everything they were doing and feeling. Among other things, he tells Emily, “We have committed a mortal sin.” He also blames Emily for their lusty relationship, saying, “I think there is something ungodly in you.”

A pastor’s sermon warns parishioners to be careful of the things they read, lest those descriptions push them toward sin. And ironically someone leaves a note in a hymnal to do just that.

Sexual & romantic Content

Emily’s brother, Branwell, is forced to tutor a family’s children as punishment for a misdeed. But while tutoring, he seduces the kids’ pretty mother. We see him kissing her neck during a musical performance in a darkened room.

As Emily and William develop feelings for one another, their attraction begins to push boundaries of propriety. Soon, the two begin kissing passionately at any spare moment—including while working on Emily’s French lessons at church. We see them in brief scenes making love—sometimes while dressed, another time while covered by a blanket and one time while mostly undressed. In the latter scene, we see William, shirtless, and glimpse Emily’s bare chest in a scene that includes other intimate kissing and caressing.

Elsewhere, Emily puts William’s hand on her clothed chest, in public, to have him feel her rapid heartbeat.

Violent Content

After being caught peeping into a neighbor’s windows, Branwell is struck with a strap. Dogs chase both Branwell and Emily.

[ Spoiler Warning ] Emily’s eventual death is described as being a result of “consumption” (as tuberculosis was then called) and heartbreak.

Crude or Profane Language

Single uses of “h—” and “da–it.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Branwell smokes cigarettes regularly. We also see him drink at a pub repeatedly, getting quite drunk with his friends. He pulls Emily in to drink some ale, too. But she finds it gag-worthy and settles for a sherry. Branwell also carries a flask that he sips from on occasion. Emily smokes a cigarette once.

Emily finds some opium extract that Branwell has been using and she experiments repeatedly with it, particularly at her saddest emotional points. (The drug use is painted as a somewhat euphoric, positive experience.) Emily is caught under the effects of the drug while in a church service.

Other noteworthy Elements

Emily lies at times to her domineering father. And that is especially true when it comes to William Weightman, who’s hired to tutor her in French. (Her French does, however, improve markedly.)

Emily and Charlotte quarrel sometimes, generally over how others perceive Emily. “They call you the fool,” Charlotte cries. “I won’t let you drag me down. I won’t.” Emily mentions at one point that she repeatedly makes choices that she hopes will earn her father’s love. But he is a stern man who only speaks positively of her when her book finally reaches a modicum of fame and profit. (But by then, however, she is calloused to him and ignores his belated attention.)

Emily’s brother, Branwell, wants to be a writer as well. And he asks Emily to evaluate his writing. But in her anger over something completely unrelated, she selfishly savages him. In return, he later purposely hides something from her that upends her life and leaves her devastated. His own ill choices drive him further into a drunkard’s life. He begs Emily’s forgiveness from his deathbed.

Branwell coaxes Emily to join him and peep in a nearby family’s windows.

At the beginning of this well-staged period piece, Emily Brontë’s sister Charlotte wonders how her sheltered, antisocial sibling could possibly have written a book such as Wuthering Heights —the 1847-published novel filled with emotional and physical abuse and challenges to Victorian morality.

“It’s base and ugly and full of ugly people who only care for themselves,” Charlotte says harshly.

The film Emily then goes on to speculate how that controversial tale may have been given life through a torrid love affair Emily had with a young and handsome church curate.

The resulting tragic biopic is at times something quite beautiful to see and hear thanks to first time-director Frances O’Connor’s reverent efforts. But O’Connor also creates a film that many will find unpleasantly embellished by drug use and fleshy sensuality.

Those R-rated wutherings ultimately lessen this biopic’s heights .

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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