Despite the title of this rather odd comic take on the life of the celebrated 19th Century American poet Emily Dickinson (Molly Shannon) it appears that Emily’s nights were far from wild. Although accordingly to this decidedly un-academic history, she did have her moments which would shock any serious scholars of her work. 

This third feature film from out gay filmmaker Madeline Olniek (she made the zany The Foxy Merkin and Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same) focuses on the unmarried Emily’s affairs with women.  She was the lifelong lover of her sister-in-law Susan Dickinson (Susan Zeigler) who had only married Emily’s brother so that they could carry on the affair that they had started as young women.

The story of their relationship is told in series of flashbacks and is set against a very exaggerated account of how the very pushy Mabel Todd  (Amy Selmetz) became a co-publisher of Emily’s first book of poems that came out posthumously. Mabel is setting out her stall by falsely pretending to having been a close personal friend of Emily and is now presenting herself at lectures to groups of women as a real expert on both Emily’s life and work. 

All of that compares sharply with the scenes of all the romps in Susan’s bed sans hooped skirts, who also very conveniently happens to be Emily’s next door neighbor.

Another myth that Olnek is anxious to debunk is that Emily was reluctant to publish any of her work during her lifetime, and in one of the funniest scenes of the film, she has a meeting with Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Brett Gelman) of the prestigious Atlantic Monthly who takes real joy showing her he would butcher her work to make it more ‘readable’.

This madcap movie that may, or may not have much semblance of the truth in its plot, seems to have been designed as a vehicle to show off  Shannon’s comic talents.  Surrounded by all these exaggerated characters in this oddball period piece, she seems in her element as the dour-looking Dickinson and eakes every laugh she can out of playing her.

It is an entertaining amusing romp even though it lacks any real substance and will no doubt be welcomed with open arms by the LGBTQ community who have long wanted to recognise Dickinson as one of their own.  We are always short of ‘heroes’ so here’s another one for the collection.