[imagesource: Bleecker Street]

There’s a new period drama in theatres now, offering a window into the brief life of Emily Brontë, author of the iconic romance novel Wuthering Heights.

While historical accounts suggest this brilliant Brontë sister created her masterpiece in decidedly drab and unadventurous seclusion, Frances O’Connor knew she had to do more with an introvert’s candlelit scribbling.

The Australian actress is making her directorial debut with Emily, taking rivetting creative liberties with history.

The Daily Beast reports that “much like the surrealist Princess Diana movie Spencer, [Emily] exudes poetic love for the mercurial woman at its centre” played by Sex Education star Emma Mackey.

O’Connor, who also wrote the script and completed shooting the film under a tight six-week deadline, builds a lush and dynamic world of sprawling landscapes and moody interiors for her characters to traipse through.

She also cleverly externalizes the “real” Emily’s inner rebellions through enthralling sequences of the heroine dabbling in voyeurism, drug use, and other debauchery.

Following in the footsteps of her wayward, hard-drinking brother, who’s in many ways her soulmate, Movie-Emily even gets a tattoo, or what looks like a tattoo.

Sounds like way more fun than Spencer.

O’Connor explains that she is “playing with the myth of Emily Brontë,” adding that “there’s something delightful about the idea that she might be taking opium out on the Moors”.

That’s a hot take if ever you saw one:

Emily is about authenticity and being okay with and celebrating being different, O’Connor says, which is definitely something all period-piece movie lovers can get behind.

Emily is sure to be an instant classic.

[source:dailybeast]