Frances O’Connor had her performing break back in 1999 playing Fanny in an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, in which she famously went toe-to-toe on screen with Harold Pinter who was playing her uncle Sir Thomas Bertram. Now she has made a really impressive debut as a writer and director with this study of Emily Brontë, intelligently played by the Franco-British star Emma Mackey. It’s beautifully acted, lovingly shot, fervently and speculatively imagined, although Mackey’s portrayal, excellent as it is, may be smoother around the edges and less windblown than the real thing.
This is a sensually imaginative dive into the life of the Wuthering Heights author: it is a real passion project for O’Connor, with some wonderfully arresting insights. The film conforms to time-honoured biopic tradition by starting with Emily on her deathbed, and a waspish, querulous final exchange with her sister Charlotte, played by Alexandra Dowling, whom the film mostly – and perhaps unfairly – sees as mean-minded and envious. Then we go back to her intense young womanhood at Haworth parsonage, under the care of her widower clergyman father Patrick (Adrian Dunbar) in the wild beauty of Yorkshire.
