‘Emily’ a unique look at author

WHAT TO WATCH

“Emily,” starring an astonishing Emma Mackey in the title role, is a fictionalized treatment of the life of Emily Bronte, author of “Wuthering Heights.” BLEECKER STREET

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By Randy Myers

Correspondent

Remember the tragic Heathcliff? How could anyone ever forget the brooding heartthrob and his romance and revenge issues?

The fictionalized “Emily” cooks up a few notions on what inspired author Emily Bronte to pen the Gothic classic “Wuthering Heights” in which he appeared. That film tops our list of must-sees this week.

Emily

Frances O’Connor’s fictionalized portrait of real-life literary legend and “Wuthering Heights” author Emily Bronte avoids the stoic, still-life cinematic portrait treatment. For her feature directorial debut, O’Connor puts her faith not in fact-checking Emily Bronte’s complicated history but in her own instincts and insights as screenwriter/director and established actor (she was terrific as Fanny Price in 1999’s “Mansfield Park,” a Jane Austen adaptation). That artistic license serves the film and its eccentric central character — a mid-19th-century social misfit with an observant eye — tremendously well.

Infused with wit, rounds of intoxicating Gothic imagery (kudos to director of photography Nanu Segal) and an ethereal performance from Emma Mackey (Netflix’s “Sex Education”) this “Emily” covers what shaped and inspired Bronte’s lone work of creative genius. It also does a convincing job of illustrating how out-of-place Emily was in a world that would prefer to stifle such an independent-minded artist.

O’Connor conveys Emily’s restless inner and outer worlds — including a romance with a strapping curate (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). She also brings to life the entire complicated Bronte bunch: Emily’s more tradition-bound but talented sisters — Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), author of “Jane Eyre,” and Anne (Amelia Gething), author of “Angus Grey.” All are still caught up in mourning the loss of their mum, but it is their impetuous brother Branwell Bronte (Fionn Whitehead), a consistent and charismatic troublemaker who brings them both joy and grief, and even literary inspiration.

For all these reasons, “Emily” is a bit of a radical period piece unto itself, a film that doesn’t want to be bound — much like its central character — to one genre or one overall conceit. And that lifts “Emily” far above other recent, more staid and comfortable “biopics.”

3½ stars out of 4; in theaters Friday.

Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.