Emily (2022)

Emma Mackey is really quite strong in this imagining of the life (and love) of "Wuthering Heights" author Emily Brontë. Portrayed as a rather shy and reluctant woman, she lives in the shadow of her successful teacher sister Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) with her somewhat wayward brother Bramwell (Fionn Whitehead) under their outwardly imperious father Patrick (Adrian Dunbar). Remember this is set at a time when women were little more than chattels, and her father hoped that she would follow her sister into one of the few professions readily available to ladies of the day. The arrival of curate "Weightman" (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) causes many an heart to flutter and after a rocky start, the two begin to bond... This is a great looking film, shot at the original West Yorkshire home of the Brontë family and together with the almost biblical amounts of thunder and rain, the whole setting is effective in delivering a sense of just how this family lived their life in rural 19th century England. The cast work well together, there is an increasingly engaging - if somewhat bamboozling towards the end - chemistry between Mackey and OJC and there is a sparing degree of dialogue. The story is very much of the woman, and not so much of her writing, and it develops using a potent combination of the powerful score, bleak scenery, some humour - usually deriving from the antics of Bramwell - and from our own imagination, to make this so very different from many similar style period bio-dramas. I didn't think that pace was a problem, but it is a slow burn. The establishment of the characters takes it's time, so don't expect it to hit the grass running. That said, though, I found it a thoughtful and characterful depiction that smacks well of plausibility, love and of mortality, too.