No. 92 (2022) EMILY. (Palace British Film Festival) Nov. 4th.

 

Film No. 92 (2022)  November 3rd.  11:00 AM  PALACE Cinema 4,  Raine Square,  Perth City.

 

"Anyone can speak, but what I really want to know is, what can he actually do?" (Emily has her say in relation to the new curate, Weightman).

WINNER:  Audience Award Best Film; Cunard British Film Festival 2022.

Frances O'Conner joins a select list of debut feature film directors to cause many heads to turn - in a good way, of course. EMILY, takes us into the world of the Bronte sisters, through the deeds of Emily around the months leading up to writing her creative masterpiece WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

O'Connor presents an interpretation of a stage (early twenties) in the life of the Bronte sisters, living in the Yorkshire wilds of West Riding. Windswept and mostly bitterly cold, sisters Emily (Emma Mackey), Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) and Anne (Amelia Gething) live under the care and guidance of their pastor father (Adrian Dunbar) during the initial stages of their creative twenties. The girls have prodigious talent. They are keen rivals.

The strongest thread in the film is the love that grows, then steams, between Emily and newly appointed curate, William Weightman. It's a moody affair, full of secrecy and passion. Emily is safe in the company of men. She adores brother Branwell and he is her distraction from the discipline and jealousies (sisters) most prevalent in her 20 something life. O'Connor has captured magnificently, the dreary, isolated world the Brontes' existed in.      

Emily is O'Connor's interpretation of an era of life for a  famous literary family. It is predominantly a love story. Those who have read varying interpretations of this time and place may like to take Frances to task. There will be a few. Me, well I enjoyed the bleak and eventually heart-breaking tale. More importantly I'm looking forward to our Aussie girl Frances', next project.  9GUMS.