Director Emerald Fennell guts one of the most emotionally violent novels ever written for a surface-level flirtation with corset kink that's as vapid as it is bafflingly tame.
Nearly 180 years after its publication, Emily Brontë’s Gothic novel “Wuthering Heights” gets a revamp from Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn), whose film has been extensively marketed as a fresh, heavily stylised and sexually charged version of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff’s tumultuous relationship.
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With inverted commas to boot.
It starts off promisingly enough, with a hanged man with a visible erection, while a young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) looks on. This could have been an early indicator that Fennell is keen to explore the Eros / Thanatos of it all - how life and death instincts are intertwined and can lead to self-destructive behaviours, especially when it comes to matters of the heart and sexual yearnings. But why bother with such trivial things when you can settle for an increasingly jarring tone that sits somewhere between comically surreal and serious?
We then see how Cathy’s father (Martin Clunes) brings home a street urchin (Owen Cooper), whom she quickly claims as her “pet”.
Years pass and lead to an older Cathy (Margot Robbie) deciding to deny her heart for the promise of a comfortable life with wealthy bachelor next door Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) overhears Cathy saying it would degrade her to marry him, and he disappears for years - only to reemerge sexed up, inexplicably wealthy, and sporting a raunchy pirate earring...
There’s every reason to celebrate a filmmaker doing something different with a source material that has been adapted countless times on both small and big screens.
Sure, streamlining the narrative, ditching half the characters and whitewashing your main character are questionable choices – and ones made before, especially when you look at the roster of actors who have been cast as Heathcliff in the past. But those quotations marks in the title should warn audiences from the get-go: this is Fennell’s version and she can do what she pleases, no matter how anti-academic it is. The filmmaker has openly said that she wanted to make a movie that captured how Brontë’s novel made her feel the first time she read it, aged 14. More power to her and literary purists be damned.
However, if you’re going to ditch the race component, strip away the class commentary and not bother with themes of intergenerational trauma inherent to the text, all in favour of selling your film as bold, sexy and provocative, your version better swing for the fences when it comes to that trifecta. Depressingly, “Wuthering Heights” is so astonishingly dull and tame that you’ll wonder what all the giddy hype was about.
Fennell can’t crank up the thirstiness, campery and strangeness - only paid lip service through some bold decor choices – and doesn’t bring any genuine frisson to simmering sexual awakenings or lustful repression.
She settles for having two genetically blessed actors – Margot Robbie doing her best Hermione Granger impression and Jacob Elordi as smoldering scaffolding – instantly paired together and have them getting caught in the rain. A LOT. Beyond that, there’s no palpable sense of longing and anticipation that could make a room suddenly feel suffocating, and Fennell ends up reducing the torrid attraction to some runny egg textures, repeated finger sucking and a carriage quickie. Had we gotten more of Cathy’s lustful stirrings triggered by her peeping on a mild BDSM encounter, the pent-up lust and the thrill of yearning would have seemed less like a transparent bid to promote a BookTok fan fiction that’s not a million miles away from E.L. James.
In their defense, both Robbie and Elordi do manage to conjure some chemistry - but no tension, chiefly because their characters are in close proximity from the get-go and you don’t relate to them in any way. These are two people for whom you should feel something for – both sympathy and hatred for the way their complex and conflicting desires stem from deep-seated trauma and self-perpetuating cycles of abuse.
Granted, Martin Clunes’s paternal figure is clearly meant to act as both the inebriated gambler and Heathcliff’s abuser, who in the novel was Cathy’s brother Hindley (absent here); but he comes off as a hapless drunk more than a figure which inspires fear and resentment. It doesn’t feel like enough to feed Heathcliff’s thirst for revenge and by extension his cruel nature, nor enough to justify this snobbishly bratty version of Cathy.
When you remove the very backstories that make the doomed lovers such fascinatingly contradictory protagonists in the first place, what you’re left with are two shallow smokeshows whose tiresome push and pull will make you wish you were watching Cruel Intentions instead.
Now there was a raunchy adaptation that actually took some risks, with a director that understood the source material.
As it is, “Wuthering Heights” is less “I hated you, I loved you, too” and more “Um ah, I don’t know, maybe, just look at me in a blood-red PVC dress that would make Baz Luhrman’s shorts tighten”.
Speaking of which, kudos to Jacqueline Durran and Suzie Davies, whose maximalist costumes and audaious production design are the film's main redemptive qualities. Fennell wanted striking stylistic choices, and they understood the assignment. It’s hardly their fault that the director couldn’t tease any substance from their heightened aesthetic and only wanted a Charli XCX-scored social media showreel.
Another redeeming shout-out must go to Alison Oliver, who stands out as Edgar’s ward, the prudish Isabella Linton. But once again, Fennell bundles it. As terrific as Oliver is as comic relief, the director makes the giant jump from having her character go from blushing ingenue to willing sub in a matter of minutes. While the dynamic between Heathcliff and Isabella could have been provocative and unsettling, it ends up played – like so many promising moments - as hollow parody.
While the vapidness of “Wuthering Heights” may not be entirely surprising coming from the filmmaker who stripped all the interesting The Talented Mr. Ripley elements from Saltburn, this is a very boring new low.
It didn’t have to be subtle, nor faithful to its literary source; but when the end result guts one of the most emotionally violent novels ever written for a surface-level flirtation with corset kink which has all the weight and depth of a half-arsed lingerie advert, there’s every reason to bemoan a lack of subversiveness, sensuality and heart.
As it is, purists are much better off seeking out Andrea Arnold’s 2011 version and teens hankering for a dose of destructive codependence courtesy of two sexually charged messy bitches should rush to discover Cruel Intentions. The soundtrack’s better in that one too.
"Wuthering Heights" is out in cinemas now.
