The film Emily sets out to unravel one of the most discussed mysteries in literature: who was Emily Brontë, after all?

The real Emily Brontë had a short life: she died at just 30, unmarried, marked by a shyness so intense that many accounts describe her as closed off, almost apathetic, distant from social life. And it is precisely because of this portrait that so many readers of her only novel, Wuthering Heights, are astonished to find there a love so toxic, carnal, obsessive, and egocentric. How could someone who never had a boyfriend imagine something so violent and all-consuming? Among those who challenge this almost mystical view of creation is actress and director Frances O’Connor, who makes her debut as both screenwriter and director precisely with this fictionalized biography.

Emily unsettles Brontë scholars because of the freedom Frances takes in “imagining” romances, situations, and traumas as interpretive keys to the author’s work. Although it delivers a beautiful romantic film, it transfers to Emily a story that, in reality, belonged to Anne Brontë: her romance with the pastor William Weightman, portrayed in the film by Oliver Jackson-Cohen. If audiences approached this openly as fantasy, it would be a legitimate poetic license. But at a time when rewriting biographies has become almost a Hollywood hobby, Emily becomes a delicate example of how a film can be dangerous precisely because it is beautiful, supported by distorted facts.

Technically, however, Frances’s screenplay and direction are impeccable, assured, and emotionally powerful. A declared admirer of the writer, she understood the strength of her work as “a story asking to be told” and refused the traditional biopic route. The result is a sensitive, involving narrative, even if historically questionable.

Emma Mackey is wonderful as Emily, and the portrayal of the Brontë family dynamics is genuinely moving. Yet it is impossible not to notice that the real-life romance between Anne—often described as the most beautiful of the sisters—and Weightman was fully transferred to the heroine. A heroine who was born more than 205 years ago and who, more than 175 years ago, wrote one of the greatest classics of English literature. The cultural impact of Wuthering Heights remains immense, and I am among those who admire even more deeply Emily’s imaginative power precisely because she did not live what she wrote with such intensity.

Creativity has no direct relationship with reality—too bad that this rule does not fully apply here. Emily is indeed a beautiful love story. But, paradoxically, it is less creative than the true story that inspired it.