Even rigorous, biographies always have an element of subjectivity, interpretation, and even, in some cases, fiction. The film Emily, which looks back on the too short existence of Emily Brontë, subscribes to this last approach. Not that we want to categorize this first feature film by Frances O’Connor, as it turns out to be inspired.
Of Emily Brontë, as of her sisters Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Anne (The tenant of Wildfell Hall) moreover, history has preserved an austere image consistent with the famous portrait painted by their brother Branwell. But how to reconcile this presumed rigorism with the debauchery of unbridled passions present in Emily Brontë’s unique but masterful novel, The Wuthering Heights ? Who has read it knows how much, between love and heartbreak, everyone is tormented. Ghosts even haunt the sleep of the living who wish they were already dead.
It is, in short, the ne plus ultra of Gothic literature, as evidenced by these lamentations of the dark Heathcliff:
“Catherine Earnshaw, may you find no rest as long as I live!” You say I killed you, haunt me then! Victims haunt their killers, I believe. I know ghosts have wandered the earth. Always be with me…take any shape…drive me crazy! But don’t leave me in this abyss where I can’t find you. Oh ! God ! It is unspeakable! I can’t live without my life! I can’t live without my soul! »
And the one who imagined all this, wrote all this, would have been a repressed young woman, without history, and having never known love? In her film, Frances O’Connor assumes not.
The secret garden
From the prologue, we discover a dying Emily. Overwhelmed, but a bit jealous, Charlotte, at her bedside, asks her how she managed to write The Wuthering Heights, to conceive this tortuous amorous intrigue, she who is foreign to love. Unless…
And Emily to remember and open her secret garden to her eldest.
It is here that the film makes a work of fiction, by making Emily and William Weightman, who was really the vicar of the pastor father of the Brontë siblings, star-crossed lovers.
The memorable sequences are numerous. We think of this game with a death mask that turns into a seance of spiritualism (then very fashionable), and where Emily puts family and guests in turmoil… We also think of this furtive embrace between Emily, who puts sheets to dry on the rope, and William, who embraces it through the fabric, so without really touching or seeing it: a brilliant metaphor for their relationship.
In this regard, some may fear a blue flower drift. But not only does Frances O’Connor avoid sentimentality, she doesn’t even come close to it.
Free in its fluid movement, but dependent on a keen eye in its compositions, the staging is in tune with the protagonist. Note that the invoice is extremely neat without being bombastic, thanks in particular to the contribution of the director of photography Nanu Segal, and that of the colorist Isabelle Julien (a prophet, jackie).
Final tribute
In the title role, Emma Mackey (the series Sex Education) is hypnotic. She delivers a feverish performance, full of inhabited silences… As her Emily seems to realize that this world and this time will never stop trying to subdue her indomitable nature, it is as if she consumed before our eyes. It is, in itself, a poignant spectacle.
It is all the more so since Frances O’Connor made the wise choice of pairing a panoramic format (2.39:1, i.e. a very wide image ratio), and an anamorphic lens, which lens has the effect of reducing depth of field. Clear ? The panoramic format is readily associated with frescoes and adventure dramas since it magnifies, yes, the panoramas, while conversely, the anamorphic lenses generate more proximity, especially in close-up.
It results, in Emily, an impression of epic intimacy. Come to think of it, it could not be more in tune with the work of the author, whom Frances O’Connor shows finding an outlet in creation, in fiction. Therefore, the fact that the filmmaker had herself resorted to a part of fiction to try to better understand the elusive author could be perceived as an ultimate tribute.