Emily

It seems like I have been waiting forever to see Emily but I finally had the chance last night at the Broadway.  Not much is known about the life of Emily Bronte so this is a fictionalized account speculating about what could have made a sheltered and inexperienced young woman capable of writing something like Wuthering Heights and I loved it.  We meet Emily (Emma Mackey) when she is ill and near death.  In her final moments her sister Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) asks her how she came to write a book as scandalous as Wuthering Heights. Several years earlier Emily is viewed as strange by the people in the village because she is sensitive, imaginative, and unconventional.  She is chastised for her behavior by her harsh father, the Rev. Patrick Bronte (Adrian Dunbar), and encouraged by her sisters, the uptight Charlotte and the docile Anne (Amelia Gething), to give up writing her fanciful stories and poems.  It is her poetry, however, that attracts the attention of her father's new curate William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen).  Despite clashing with each other, they fall madly in love and are soon drawn into a forbidden affair that is as passionate and doomed as that of Cathy and Heathcliff.  She is devastated when he suddenly ends the relationship and vows that she will never write again but her dissolute brother Branwell (Fionn Whitehead) reveals a secret which enables her to find her voice and write her masterpiece.  I love dark and brooding Gothic romances and this is a particularly good one due, in large part, to a highly nuanced performance by Mackey.  I loved all of the close-up shots of her face, because even when those around her are forcing her into submission her expressive eyes betray her inner rebellion, as well as all of the scenes depicting her wild abandon on the moors.  Jackson-Cohen is also outstanding, particularly in a scene where he struggles to suppress his passion while getting into his clerical garb, and I enjoyed Whitehead's boyish charm (as opposed to all of the psychopathic villains he has portrayed lately).  The beautiful cinematography showing the wild and windswept moors (which almost feel like a character) and the evocative score add to the otherworldly atmosphere.  Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed all of the subtle allusions to Wuthering Heights, particularly a scene involving the supernatural.  I highly recommend this, especially to all of my fellow fans of Gothic romances.

Note:  With this, Of An Age, and Close I am three for three with movies at the Broadway this week!