Directed by: Madeleine Olnek
Written by: Madeleine Olnek
Cast: Molly Shannon, Amy Seimetz, Susan Ziegler, Brett Gelman
Genre: Comedy / Biography / Historical Satire / Queer Cinema
Runtime: 84 minutes
💬 Plot Overview
For over a century, literary history painted Emily Dickinson as a reclusive, agoraphobic spinster who wrote melancholic poetry in self-imposed isolation. Madeleine Olnek’s Wild Nights with Emily gleefully dismantles this stale myth. Starring Molly Shannon as a vibrant, passionate Emily Dickinson, the film centers on her lifelong, secret romantic relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert (Susan Ziegler). While Emily creates immortal verse behind closed doors, she actively attempts to publish her work—only to be thwarted by a patronizing literary establishment and, later, by Mabel Loomis Todd (Amy Seimetz), who erased Susan’s name from Dickinson’s manuscripts to shape a marketable, tragic narrative.
🎨 Style & Direction
Deadpan Revisionism: Olnek combines meticulous archival research with deadpan, absurdist humor, reclaiming Dickinson’s legacy without falling into dry period-piece tropes.
Molly Shannon’s Kinetic Brilliance: Shannon delivers a grounded yet delightfully witty performance, effortlessly shifting between quiet emotional depth and sharp comedic timing.
Subversion of Literary Myths: Through clever framing and dry satire, the film exposes how patriarchal gatekeeping and erasure historically erased queer love from canonical literature.
💬 QueerFilmHub Perspective
“Wild Nights with Emily is a radically funny, deeply necessary piece of revisionist queer cinema—a film that trades tragic tropes for incandescent joy, reclaiming one of history's greatest poets with razor-sharp wit.”
