"It’s daring, and ravishing."
— Deborah Ross, The Spectator
"Emily is a sensitive and passionate portrait of the author."
— Radheyan Simonpillai, The Guardian
"With Emily, Frances O’Connor has crafted a first film that feels like the work of an accomplished master."
— Jason Bailey, The Playlist
"O’Connor, who also scripted, adroitly manages the feat of making a 19th-century period piece burst with contemporary feeling."
— Christopher Schobert, The Film Stage
"Emma Mackey’s appealing performance, a combination of defiance, depth and vulnerability, brings to life an obscured literary figure."
— Wenlei Ma, News.com.au
"This is a sensually imaginative dive into the life of the Wuthering Heights author: it is a real passion project for O’Connor, with some wonderfully arresting insights."
— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
"Mackey convinces us that there are so many more colours to Emily than the ones she is allowed to display. Her thoughtful, understated performance matches a film that teases out the flesh-and-blood emotions from the stuff of gothic romance."
— Allan Hunter, Screen Daily
"This is the way you hope things might have been for Emily simply because it makes her more human. Rather than being an ethereal character entirely caught up in the realms of her own imagination, it puts her in touch with the world the rest of us inhabit."
— Sandra Hall, Sydney Morning Herald
"Mackey, in particular, is a powerhouse. The young star is matched well with O’Connor’s carefully calibrated, appealingly earnest script, which approximates a modern sensibility without striking a false note or straying from Emily’s contemporaneous moors."
— Tara Brady, The Irish Times
"O’Connor clearly isn’t afraid of rattling cages when approaching sacred texts. There’s something refreshingly untethered about the gusto with which she reimagines Emily, tossing aside the image of a shy, sickly recluse, replacing it with an antiheroine whose inability to fit in with the ordered world is a source of strength rather than weakness."
— Mark Kermode, The Observer (UK)
