An aspiring transcendentalist bellowing the magnificently corny motto “freedom in thought!” he brings his kid sister along for wild afternoon adventures on those windy Yorkshire cliffs, introducing her to liquor and opium, as well as a hobby of peeping through the windows of their dull, hoity-toity neighbors that readers might recognize from “Wuthering Heights.” (It’s the one sequence in which the movie strays a little too close to becoming a “Shakespeare in Love”-style Easter egg hunt.) Branwell has all the swagger, braggadocio and insufferable pretensions of an author for the ages. Still from 'Emily.' (Courtesy Obscured Pictures)Įmily is treated like an alien by sisters Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) and Anne (Amelia Gething) but has a kindred spirit in her dissolute brother Branwell, played with a touching guilelessness by Fionn Whitehead. A head taller than her sisters and a good deal darker in both hair color and disposition, Emily’s a proto-Goth girl sitting off by herself in these Victorian church pews, bored to catatonia by the sermons of hunky new curate Mr. She’s played by Emma Mackey (from the Netflix series “Sex Education,” which I apparently need to watch) with deep-set eyes in a faraway gaze often interrupted by reckless, impulsive gestures.

It’s a very modern movie about the idea of being Emily Brontë, misfit of the moors. So little is known about Emily’s actual life and times that the picture is free to indulge in thrillingly salacious speculations and semi-informed attempts to explore the roiling passions and mercurial contradictions that might have inspired our socially awkward wallflower to put pen to paper. O’Connor’s film - for which she also wrote the screenplay - is likewise mostly made-up stuff. Beyond being an index of backhanded compliments, the surviving Brontë sister’s words kicked off a legacy of wild speculations and dopey literary conspiracy theories fueled by chauvinism, intellectual snobbery and our culture’s unfortunate disinclination to believe that sometimes people are just really good at making stuff up. All artist biopics are to some extent or another attempts to “solve” their subjects, and the mysteries of how an informally educated and unworldly homebody like Emily Brontë came to write such a singularly radical Gothic romance have been swirling around ever since Charlotte outed author Ellis Bell as her recently deceased sibling way back in 1850.

“How did you write ‘Wuthering Heights?’” pinch-faced buzzkill Charlotte Brontë asks her dying sister during the opening moments of “Emily,” actress Frances O’Connor’s atmospheric and welcomely irreverent directorial debut. Emma Mackey in 'Emily.' (Courtesy Obscured Pictures)

Emily brontë