How did Emily Brontë find the inspiration to write Wuthering Heights? She lived in near-complete isolation on the Yorkshire moors, had no known romantic connections and died at 30, yet managed to produce one of the most passionate, tempestuous love stories ever written. Emily seeks to answer this question, taking a vaguely Shakespeare in Love approach by suggesting that the gothic drama of her 1847 novel was inspired by a secret affair.
Sex Education's Emma Mackey stars as the titular Brontë, an introverted recluse who shuns anyone outside her immediate family and is branded "The Strange One" by fellow residents of the small town of Howarth. Rather than human companionship, Emily prowls the wild, wet, windy moors, creating characters and writing poems with her siblings: the extroverted Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling, who essentially plays this film's version of a basic popular girl), the mild-mannered Anne (Amelia Gething), and the promising but irresponsible Bramwell (Fionn Whitehead).
But Emily's life of solitude is interrupted by a torrid romance with the new church curate (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), whose strict religious code becomes a little less strict once the clothes come off. Though they aren't exactly Catherine and Heathcliff, their relationship is similarly passionate and doomed. As anyone familiar with the Brontës knows, a brutal series of family tragedies unfold.
Veteran actor turned debut director Frances O'Connor slightly oversells both the romance and the Romance, bringing a poetic melodrama to the screen that isn't always plausible but nicely fits the gothic mould of its subject. The stunning setting and the stately, occasionally thunderous score by Abel Korzeniowski do a lot of the tonal heavy lifting, to great effect, while Mackey conveys Emily's erratic tendencies while channeling the smirking wit of someone smarter than everyone around her. Particularly in the first half of the film, she's closer to Pride and Prejudice's Elizabeth Bennet than a Brontë character, and the Emily depicted here is actually less volatile and withdrawn than the existing accounts of her.
Inevitably, a movie like this will beg the question: did any of this actually happen? Well, no. There's no evidence that the famously isolated Brontë had a grand love affair, and the filmmakers take extreme liberties with the timeline to say the very least. For example: Jane Eyre came out slightly before Wuthering Heights, which isn't at all what's suggested here. The timeline of the many deaths is similarly rewritten for narrative effect.
In all likelihood, Emily Brontë's great novel was inspired by nothing more than her own imagination. That makes it perhaps an even more incredible literary achievement — but it would be a far less interesting biopic.
(Sphere)Sex Education's Emma Mackey stars as the titular Brontë, an introverted recluse who shuns anyone outside her immediate family and is branded "The Strange One" by fellow residents of the small town of Howarth. Rather than human companionship, Emily prowls the wild, wet, windy moors, creating characters and writing poems with her siblings: the extroverted Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling, who essentially plays this film's version of a basic popular girl), the mild-mannered Anne (Amelia Gething), and the promising but irresponsible Bramwell (Fionn Whitehead).
But Emily's life of solitude is interrupted by a torrid romance with the new church curate (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), whose strict religious code becomes a little less strict once the clothes come off. Though they aren't exactly Catherine and Heathcliff, their relationship is similarly passionate and doomed. As anyone familiar with the Brontës knows, a brutal series of family tragedies unfold.
Veteran actor turned debut director Frances O'Connor slightly oversells both the romance and the Romance, bringing a poetic melodrama to the screen that isn't always plausible but nicely fits the gothic mould of its subject. The stunning setting and the stately, occasionally thunderous score by Abel Korzeniowski do a lot of the tonal heavy lifting, to great effect, while Mackey conveys Emily's erratic tendencies while channeling the smirking wit of someone smarter than everyone around her. Particularly in the first half of the film, she's closer to Pride and Prejudice's Elizabeth Bennet than a Brontë character, and the Emily depicted here is actually less volatile and withdrawn than the existing accounts of her.
Inevitably, a movie like this will beg the question: did any of this actually happen? Well, no. There's no evidence that the famously isolated Brontë had a grand love affair, and the filmmakers take extreme liberties with the timeline to say the very least. For example: Jane Eyre came out slightly before Wuthering Heights, which isn't at all what's suggested here. The timeline of the many deaths is similarly rewritten for narrative effect.
In all likelihood, Emily Brontë's great novel was inspired by nothing more than her own imagination. That makes it perhaps an even more incredible literary achievement — but it would be a far less interesting biopic.
