And now there’s Emily, in limited release in theaters from February 17. Starring Emma Mackey of Sex Education fame, it is Australian-British actress Frances O’Connor directorial debut—but you can’t tell, with Brontë being rendered in such an impressively loving and nuanced way (her sisters, not so much).

If you’re coming to any of these modern reimaginings of misunderstood women throughout history for classical accuracy, you’re barking up the wrong tree. [...]

Emily is a mostly fictionalized fantasy about an affair Brontë has with the town’s new curate, William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Historians won’t be happy but, like Dickinson, it’s an important and valid reconceptualization of a woman who is best known as a cloistered, maladjusted hysteric, now seen as vibrant, sensual, and in possession of a rich inner life. Not to mention the sex. Okay, let’s mention the sex! In the vein of Bridgerton, Emily proves that people in the olden days did indeed have sexual desires— and even acted on them! The taboo yearning between Brontë and William will get viewers hot under the collar — of which there are many to take off. 

O’Connor makes sure to balance this: we see Brontë eschew the arrival of her sister Charlotte’s (Alexandra Dowling) school friend, saying that she doesn’t “like meeting new people” and thus will stay in her room for the duration of the friend’s stay. Brontë suffers from panic attacks at boarding school and has to return home. During a particularly arresting scene early in the movie, the Brontë sisters — Emily, Charlotte and the youngest, Anne (Amelia Gething) —, brother Branwell (Fionn Whitehead), William, and others undertake a seance-like game one stormy night. Brontë appears to take on the spirit of their dead mother and by the end of the night has everyone screaming and crying as the windows blow open. Did she really summon her mother or was it just another example of Brontë’s wild imagination, which Charlotte tells her to dampen because she’s too old to tell stories?

It’s Charlotte’s obsession with Brontë’s inspiration for her work, specifically Wuthering Heights, her only published novel, that bookends Emily, with the film’s resident wet blanket wondering how Brontë could possibly come up with the passionate scenes depicted therein.

That’s where William comes in, played to perfection by the smoldering Jackson-Cohen, and where any pretense of historical accuracy is dropped by O’Connor. The film mostly centers on their apparent love affair, which is achingly desirous and serves to put to bed (pun intended) notions that Brontë “never sought… intercourse” (meaning social interactions) with people, “nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced [it]” as Charlotte wrote or, at least, that the two were mutually exclusive. (Scarlett Harris)

Sparkhouse (2002)

Sowerby Bridge, where Wainwright grew up, is just a half an hour drive from Haworth, the home of the Brontë sisters, so it follows that Wainwright would write a drama or two about the famous authors. Sparkhouse was a BBC One modern adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights which had Sarah Smart playing the Heathcliffe figure Carol Bolton and Joe McFadden playing the Cathy figure Andrew Lawton. The Guardian at the time said, “It all seems a little too Gothic, even for 21st-century Yorkshire,” but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

To Walk Invisible (2016)

Another Brontë drama from Wainwright, To Walk Invisible is set in 1845 and focuses on the relationship between the sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne. It follows their lives as they go about writing their novels, all while coping with their brother Branwell’s alcoholism. The Guardian said: “This, of course, is Wainwright’s specialist subject – the extraordinary things ordinary people face and the courage it takes to surmount them. She takes for granted the sisters’ genius (the books, after all, are there to prove it to us), leaving the focus on the domestic tyranny.” (Elizabeth Gregory)