Magazin für unabhängiges Kino
Filmwecker
Filmnotiz

Neue Notiz

Emily

Similar to how Francis Lee‘s AMMONITE painted a picture of the undocumented sides of women‘s lives in the 19th century by portraying a real person, namely paleontologist Mary Anning, EMILY is more of a fantasy than a biopic.

More

When the new, dapper curate Mr. Weightman starts working in Haworth in West Yorkshire, it‘s raining, and he muses about God in every raindrop during his first sermon. The parish is delighted by the poetry and sensitivity, Anne and Charlotte Brontë, the preacher‘s daughters, are too, only one looks on skeptically: Emily.

Not much is known about Emily Brontë, one of the most famous and bravest writers in world literature. In 1847, at 29 years old, she wrote her first and only novel under the pseudonym Ellis Bells, the classic “Wuthering Heights.“ One year later she died, most likely from a lung infection. She was never married, and no one knows whether she was ever in a relationship. And so the debut of Frances O‘Connor doesn‘t deal with facts, but rather attempts to get closer to her life with the help of the novel. Instead of the typical search for traces of historically proven events in a literary work, O‘Connor imagines scenes from Emily‘s life based on elements of the book, which works astoundingly well.

O‘Connor depicts the relationship between Emily (Emma Mackey) and her brother Branson as close and conspiratorial. Together they pay homage to the “freedom of thoughts“ in the Yorkshire Moors and in the evenings they peep on the brightly light window of the rich neighbors – just like the self-destructive couple Catherine Earnshaw and her adopted brother Heathcliff do in “Wuthering Heights.“ O‘Connor also invents a sexy affair between Emily and Mr. Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), that is similarly secret, passionate and doomed like the love story between Catherine and Heathcliff. In the book it was Cathy that was striving for a more bourgeois life than was possible with Heathcliff, here it is Mr. Weightman whose faith prevents him from professing to free spirit Emily.

Nanu Segal‘s camera connects the tumultuous emotions with the wide heathland of the upland moors and its ever-changing lighting. Andrea Arnold‘s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights“ was dominated by the gray heaviness of a cloudy sky, here the sun sometimes gleams through, the moor is the place where Emily can freely breathe, love and think. At one point she says “I will never get out of this pond“ and Weightman answers “this isn‘t a pond, it‘s the sea.“ The wind soughs the pasture grass in accompaniment.

Similar to Francis Lee‘s AMMONITE from last year, which also took a real person, palaeontologist Mary Anning, and created a picture of the undocumented sides of women‘s lives in the 19th century, EMILY is more of a fantasy than a biopic. O‘Connor develops a modern portrait of a highly intelligent, very private woman, who has little time for social rules, but whose directness fascinated several people. The woman that Emily Brontë could‘ve been, but probably not...

Hendrike Bake

Translation: Elinor Lewy

Credits

Großbritannien 2022, 130 min
Genre: Drama, Biography
Director: Frances O'Connor
Author: Frances O'Connor
DOP: Nanu Segal
Montage: Sam Sneade
Music: Abel Korzeniowski
Distributor: Wild Bunch
Cast: Emma Mackey, Fionn Whitehead, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Adrian Dunbar, Gemma Jones, Alexandra Dowling, Sacha Parkinson, Amelia Gething
Release: 24.11.2022

Website
IMDB

Screenings

  • OV Original version
  • OmU Original with German subtitles
  • OmeU Original with English subtitles

Keine Programmdaten vorhanden.

ALLE ANGABEN OHNE GEWÄHR.
Die Inhalte dieser Webseite dürfen nicht gehandelt oder weitergegeben werden. Jede Vervielfältigung, Veröffentlichung oder andere Nutzung dieser Inhalte ist verboten, soweit die INDIEKINO BERLIN UG (haftungsbeschränkt) nicht ausdrücklich schriftlich ihr Einverständnis erklärt hat.