Natalie Ladyman

I expected to love this movie. Frances O’Connor as Fanny Price in Mansfield Park is my favourite actress in one of my favourite films. And I think it is so exciting that she has moved into writing and directing. I did love the filming, music and scenery in Emily. I didn’t give a toss that the film was not historically accurate - unlike many of the other reviewers bothered by that here on this review page. Well done to her, O’Connor has created an imagining of what might have been not an intentionally accurate biographical recount and this is made clear from the start. However, I was unexpectedly disappointed overall by Emily. The characters lost me. I just didn’t empathise with them. I loved the many evocative rain and wind scenes. The rain was cleverly entwined in the plot and for me, the rain became one of the most interesting characters. As for the human characters, I got fed up with scene after scene of melodramatic weeping and hand wrenching. I know these scenes were appropriate to the genre and sad turns in the plot but I got to the point of getting bored with all the weepiness. I think I actually fell asleep for a bit and woke up disappointed to yet another doom and gloom woeful crying scene. Somehow with all this crying and melodrama the characters just didn’t come alive for me. I got tired of them. Emily Bronte here had no nowhere near the complexity and grit of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. I know the two movies were different genres but Emily and all the other characters just seemed a bit one dimensional and predictable for me. Characters in tragidramas can be complex, interesting and not snivelling - think Catherine and Heathcliffe in the novel. Having made this criticism I do hope that Frances O’Connor writes and directs another movie soon. She has great talent. Emma Mackey would make a wonderful Catherine in Wuthering Heights. I’ve never seen a film version of this that does the book justice. O’Connor as writer and director and Mackey as Catherine could create a wonderful work!