Emily is a most wonderful story
FILM REVIEW: EMILY (15) – VIEWED AT THE LIGHT CINEMA, WISBECH
STARS: Emma Mackey, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Adrian Dunbar, Fionn Whitehead, Alexandra Dowling, Amelia Gething.
RUNNING TIME: 2 hr 10 mins DIRECTOR: Frances O’Connor
I imagine many people will be purchasing Emily Brontë’s classic, and only, novel, Wuthering Heights, after viewing this film. It takes what fans already know about the most enigmatic of the Brontë sisters and mixes facts with fantasy to produce a most wonderful story.
We meet Emily (Emma Mackey) on her deathbed at the family home in Howarth, west Yorkshire, in 1848, with younger sister Anne (Amelia Gething) asking how she managed to write her classic novel.
Then we’re treated to two hours of drama, turmoil and romance as her 30 years on earth are played out on the big screen.
Much of the film is based on fact. It is known that Emily was shy and reclusive, loving to spend time with her family and few others.
She was certainly the most mysterious of the three sisters and was reported to have a very close relationship with brother Branwell (Fionn Whitehead).
Her father Patrick was an Irish Anglican priest who spent most of his adult life in England, so Adrian Dunbar was perfectly cast as this character.
And young, charismatic priest Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) was adored by his congregation, as visitors to the village church can still see to this day, with a plaque in his honour paid for by grateful parishioners.
The story wound around these facts is beautiful and tragic, and Mackey is superb as Emily, flitting from sultry to sexy, from naive to naughty, seemingly at the flick of a switch.
Her relationship with Weightman, also played superbly by Jackson-Cohen, is played out very well and there is a wonderfully humorous sex scene when the complications of undressing a well-clad Victorian woman are demonstrated all too clearly.
Gething and Alexandra Dowling are mainly stooges to Mackey as her sisters Anne and Charlotte, and it is Whitehead as beloved brother Branwell who is allowed to shine.
The scenes between the two, at home, gazing into the windows of others and on the Moors, are moving and memorable. And there are obvious and deliberate parallels with Wuthering Heights as the film plays out to its satisfying but heartbreaking end.
Jeremy Ransome
Rating 9/10
Showing at The Light Cinema, Cromwell Road, Wisbech, from Friday...
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