Review: Emily

My knowledge of the Bronte sisters is small. But I feel it is enough to get me by in general conversation.

However, Emily Bronte is not fully well known for even the most expert historian. So when I saw the people involved in this, it had my curiosity.

This is the directorial debut for Frances O'Connor. Most people from my generation will know for her roles in Gosford Park, Bedazzled, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and most recently The Conjuring 2.

Now O'Connor has turned her attention to being behind the camera and the solid buzz surrounding it had me intrigued me to see her vision of this celebrated figure where little is truly known about her. 

It has all the usual looks of what you expect with a period drama. But O'Connor gave it something different which I think is worth seeing and it felt refreshing to see.

There are some scenes that purposely give the feeling of a horror film. I think due to the little we really know about the titular character, there is room to go into more of a genre piece. There is realms of horror and fairy tale involved in this plot. There is one particular scene with a horror tone that is truly terrifying and is one of the best scenes I've seen this year.

There are obvious additions to the story to give a fully-fledged plot that they feel would have happened in her life to give us the work we know she created. All of these choices I felt worked really well or were functional at worst to give us a pretty effective and satisfying story.

The cast was pretty good on the whole. Emma Mackey is an absolute star in the leading role. A striking screen presence with authority beyond her years and painted a picture that clearly shows what the director was going for. A troubled soul with a lot of pressure on their shoulders and a mindset that society wasn't ready for that was eventually celebrated over time.

It was great seeing Fionn Whitehead continue to be part of projects and he did a great job in this and had solid chemistry with Mackey.

While I didn't think Oliver Jackson-Cohen was exceptional, he was good enough as support for Mackey. But I think for the amount of screen-time his character had, I would have expected a better casting choice.

The Yorkshire landscape is used with great effect both in the imagery and the sound design. It gave us a backdrop that was both beautiful and spooky in small doses. The score by Abel Korzeniowski enhanced the thoughts of Emily Bronte well and obviously the costumes fit the period perfectly and looked great on screen.

I thought this was a well put together piece of work with a lot of passion, vision and imagination. I can't quite give a great rating as most of the elements no more than good which is perfectly fine. The story is solid, there is a strong leading performance, and the overall tone and look is pretty evocative.

For a directorial debut, this is an impressive first outing for O'Connor. You can see a confident approach that is not afraid to experiment and flirt with other genres. It's not often actors transcend to behind the camera activities. But O'Connor could have found a second career in the industry.

Rating: 7/10