‘Wuthering Heights’ review: what’s the point?
Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s beloved novel seems at war with itself. Too silly to take seriously but too moody to be considered a light-hearted guilty pleasure. Is provocation its only purpose?
By Cayle Reid
FILMS THAT ADAPT beloved classics are prone to polarisation, but few can cause a tiff by the sheer force of their title. With that in mind, Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ could almost be commended for its commitment to provocation. Although, now that I’ve seen the film, the quotation marks in the title seem less like a gimmick and more like plausible deniability – a way for those behind it to say ‘well, it’s not really ‘Wuthering Heights’, is it?’
“I can’t say I’m making Wuthering Heights,” Fennell said in an interview prior to the film’s release, explaining the stylised title. “What I can say is I’m making a version of it. There’s a version that I remembered reading that isn’t quite real. And there’s a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so it is Wuthering Heights, and it isn’t.”
Such a comment reads like Fennell was anticipating some backlash to her hyper-sexualised, Charli XCX-ified film. She did offer another, less prophetic but no less astute observation. “The book means so much to me, and it means so much to so many people.”
It’s hard to argue with that. ‘Wuthering Heights’ is rarely described as simply ‘Emily Brontë’s novel’. It has to be ‘Emily Brontë’s beloved novel’. Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff No Last Name, those trauma-bonded childhood sweethearts who grow into star-crossed lovers kept apart by unfortunate circumstances, have extraordinary staying power. So, too, do the desolate, blustery moors that serve as the novel’s backdrop. There have been over 20 adaptations of Wuthering Heights, from William Wyler’s melodramatic 1939 classic to Andrea Arnold’s bold take, which featured a person of colour as Heathcliff. But while Fennell evidently understands that the novel means a lot to many people, it’s difficult to decipher precisely what it means to her.
In her version of ‘Wuthering Heights’, Fennell seeks to infuse the classic tale with her own distinct provocateur style. But in doing so, she removes much of what makes the original so great. Brontë’s unsentimental observations on class, race, desire and dysfunction belong to her era, but translate fluidly into our own. Taboos abound – we are talking, after all, about a novel with plot points surrounding incest, necrophilia and child murder. Fennell’s adaptation, for all its breathiness, BDSM and bodice ripping, sanitises or completely removes these elements.
Jacob Elordi, as usual, gives a spirited performance – though it is questionable whether he and Margot Robbie, aged 28 and 35, are the right actors to portray characters who are supposed to be in their late teens. Age aside, Elordi quite clearly has the perfect look for the role Fennell envisioned – a tall, handsome, magnetic muse for the audience to fawn over. What he doesn’t look like, however, is the “dark-skinned gipsy,” described in the novel.
The controversy surrounding the decision to cast Elordi as Heathcliff has been well-documented, but what’s strange is the selective colour blindness. Though Heathcliff is explicitly described as dark-skinned, no other character in the novel is. This makes the casting of Hong Chau as Cathy’s companion, Nelly, and Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton, Cathy’s husband, seem less like an attempt at diversity than a defence against potential criticism of Heathcliff’s whitewashing.
Some of the novel’s most powerful moments are drawn from Heathcliff’s transition from complete disempowerment as a result of his race and lower class to utter villainy once he comes into a fortune. The erasure of any racial difference between Heathcliff and Catherine undermines and ultimately eschews one of the novel’s central themes. In fact, any commentary on race or class in Fennell’s film feels obligatory. Fennell is in such a rush to get to Heathcliff and Catherine getting hot and heavy that she almost entirely skips over elements that made the source material so strong.
Consistently impressive cinematography could salvage ‘Wuthering Heights’. Instead, the film oscillates between a moody, visually captivating outdoor setting on the moors and an unabashedly Poor Things-inspired set design at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. No doubt, Fennell is a fan of Yorgos Lanthimos, but was a film set in windswept Yorkshire the right one to pay homage?
There is something to be learned about how Fennell views her audience from ‘Wuthering Heights’s opening scene, in which the sound of a man grunting is heard over a dark screen, only for it to be revealed that he is not receiving sexual pleasure, but is being hanged. The crowd, enamoured by the man’s involuntary erection, go into raptures. Are we supposed to be the crowd? Is this a comment on our supposed obsession with corny dick jokes and hints of softcore erotica?
That brings me to another question: who is this film for? The audience at my local theatre seemed confused on this topic. Some would burst into laughter at even the slightest hint of dry wit, while others swooned whenever Heathcliff came near Catherine. Neither interpretation is really correct. ‘Wuthering Heights’ is decidedly not a comedy, but its amusing moments undermine its serious ones. Nor is it a wholesome romance that will bring people back with nostalgia in a few years’ time. Back to our original question, then: what’s the point? Should we simply be provoked, air our grievances and move on? For those who were cynical about Fennell’s previous work, watching ‘Wuthering Heights’ will likely be a validating experience. For those who have enjoyed the film, congratulations, you must fit into the very narrow subset of people this film was made for.
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You should really, really take a date to see Wuthering Heights
