Wild Nights with Emily

Do not go into this film expecting a re-hash/re-make of Terence Davies' [quite lovely] A Quiet Passion - or, you will be woefully and sorely disappointed. For this is a cheap, irreverent, [obviously] reverential, playfully fictionalised spoof of Emily Dickinson's life and works.

How Madeleine Olnek managed to get permission from Harvard to use Dickinson's poems and letters is - indeed - a feather in her cap! They must be reeling with rage! Or, do the Harvard elite have an unexpected and surprising sense-of-humour? Because...you need one, an acquired one at that, for this rather ragged film.

As we saw with Mary Shelley, filmmakers take liberties with [rather well-documented] literary figures, they re-interpret and abuse the facts until their agenda is fulfilled...to Hell with credibility. Madeleine Olnek's posthumous politicising of Emily Dickinson as being a lesbian feminist hero is - for want of a better word - a nonsense. Cue: a series of heated debates and some obligatory H8-mails!

The less-serious will probably say: C'mon, climb down from your high-horse, it's all just a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun! Touché!

Trailer...