Emma Mackey is splendiferous in this frequently scintillating and teen-friendly biopic about Wuthering Heights author Emily Brontë. That said, much about Frances O’Connor’s directing debut is disappointing.
O’Connor, who also wrote the screenplay, seems to think that being on Team Emily means sticking the boot into her sisters, Charlotte and Anne. Even worse, she gives Emily a good-in-bed boyfriend. The film wants to be modern, but the logic that underpins it (where there’s passion, there must be a penis) is old hat.
Back to Mackey, who uses the intelligence and guile she displayed in Sex Education to play Emily as an atypical wallflower. Emily seems clenched and gauche, but give her a mask — literally a family heirloom she holds over her face — and she blossoms into someone who can command the room. In a brilliant sequence, Emily appears possessed by the spirit of the Brontë’s mother and what Mackey does with her voice, by turns steely and milky, roots us to the spot. Hers is a blazing performance.
The film’s Emily is most at ease with her big brother, Branwell (Fionn Whitehead) and their larky, anguished and occasionally opium-fuelled encounters are raw and engaging.
O’Connor isn’t trying to be glossy. Scenes cut to black or come to an abrupt end. The arrhythmic pace is fitting.
How tragic that, in the second half, O’Connor loses the plot. We get anachronistic, generically ‘hot’ scenes between Emily and local curate William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen; doing his absolute best to be more than dashing).
Equally facile is the way Emily’s love-life crumbles as soon as undermining Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) returns.
The film boils down to: creativity is a race and Emily got to the finishing line first! And she had more sex than her sisters! And Charlotte was well jel! In real life, the sisters were team players. Why is that not a story worth telling?
O’Connor, on the basis of this effort, is a talented director and a so-so writer. She showcases the gifts of Mackey but the Brontës deserve better.
