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Emily film image, director Frances O'Connor

Emily

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Sex Education discovery Emma Mackey makes a sensational big screen debut as Emily Brontë in this imaginative biopic from writer-director Frances O’Connor (best known for acting in Mansfield Park and Spielberg’s A.I.). Readers have always been fascinated by how the shy, demure Yorkshire preacher’s daughter could have created something as wildly, dangerously romantic as Wuthering Heights. It’s an open question because most of the relatively little that we know about the writer comes filtered through what her sister Charlotte considered appropriate to share.

O’Connor suggests a sibling rivalry at work, and conceives of a secret liaison with a curate, Weightman, in the employ of the sisters’ father, and even a semblance of a love triangle with Emily’s brother, Branwell. That may sound scurrilous, but this serious, well-directed movie doesn’t lack for nuance or sensitivity; it has smart things to say about how a mixture of conviction, self-belief and mortification can feed creativity, and how Emily’s horizons weren’t curtailed by her remote, rural homestead. In fact, these things may have liberated her.

Director
Cast

Emma Mackey, Fionn Whitehead, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Alexandra Dowling, Adrian Dunbar, Amelia Gething, Gemma Jones

Credits
Country of Origin

UK/USA

Year

2022

Language

English

Film Contact
18+
130 min
Drama Romance Women Directors

Book Tickets

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Credits

Executive Producer

Robert Patterson, Jo Bamford, Abel Korzeniowski, Tim Haslam, Hugo Grumbar, Peter Touche, Jamie Jessop, Andrea Scarso, Michael Reuter, Sebastian Barker, Oliver Parker

Producer

Piers Tempest, Robert Connolly, David Barron

Screenwriter

Frances O’Connor

Cinematography

Nanu Segal

Editor

Sam Sneade

Production Design

Steve Summersgill

Original Music

Abel Korzeniowski

Director

Frances O'Connor headshot, Emily director

Frances O'Connor

Frances O’Connor is an Australian-English actress living in London, best known for her roles in the films Mansfield Park and The Importance of Being Earnest, and the TV series Madame Bovary and The Missing, with the latter two earning her Best Actress nominations at the Golden Globes. Her other film credits include Thank God He Met Lizzie, Bedazzled, and the leading role of Monica Swinton in Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence. O’Connor will be next seen in Sky Drama’s ten-part series, The End. Emily is her directorial feature debut.