Wild Nights with Emily

For over a century, the story went that Emily Dickinson was a pale recluse in white who never loved anyone. Madeleine Olnek's film follows the livelier Emily (Molly Shannon), who writes ferociously, wants to be published, and has loved Susan (Susan Ziegler) since they were young. Olnek plays it as a comedy with a stage-set artifice, bright and a little silly, so the poems arrive as spoken love letters.