Released: 12th February
Seen: 3rd May
In 1847, Emily Brontë released her first and only novel, Wuthering Heights, under the pen name Ellis Bell,. The story has gone on to be considered a classic, a gothic tragedy that has been told countless times since then. It’s inspired plays, operas, TV and film adaptations and of course the first single by the iconic Kate Bush. It’s also one of those books I haven’t had a chance to read yet so if you’re hoping to find out if this is an accurate adaptation, I’m not the man for that. I am pretty confident that this film is not the most faithful adaptation ever, but it’s also not trying to be faithful and if you meet it on the level it’s working at you might find there’s something interesting here.
“Wuthering Heights” follows the lifelong twisted relationship between Catherine “Cathy” Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and her adopted brother, and figure of her darkest desires, Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi). The film follows the young pair through a brief childhood, filled with tension and occasional outbursts, before turning into the bankable actors who feature on every poster, whom we can get to be far more sexual than one could imagine. They have a brief separation where Heathcliff goes off, turning from a filthy brute of a man to a rich upper-class man who barely hides the brutality that’s always been there, and upon his return the two have an illicit affair that destroys them both in the end.
“Wuthering Heights” was promised to be Emerald Fennell’s version of the story, not the most faithful but a version of the story that she remembered and wanted to see and if you’re a fan of her previous work like I am, you can definitely see that. Much like her previous works, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, this is a dark film that plays with the idea of sex and power while utilising gorgeous locations and clever casting to create a sense of foreboding that starts from the first frame. You spend the entire film just waiting for the shoe to drop, for everything to be destroyed because that’s kind of what happens in an Emerald Fennell film and especially one inspired by this story. If you’ve seen her previous work, you kind of have an idea of what’s going to happen in her version of this story and sure enough that’s what’s being delivered here and it works more often than it doesn’t.
When “Wuthering Heights” is telling a story of a doomed romance that is constantly pulled apart by a combination of cruel behaviour, outside forces and misunderstandings, it can be quite powerful. There are moments of brilliance in how the story is presented. The two leads have truly palpable chemistry that just works, no matter what they’re doing. Fighting or fucking, there’s a raw passion that burns in every single scene with the two leads that’s hard to look away from. Of course, when it comes time for Heathcliff to be a bastard and turn into a worse version of Christian Grey, that’s kind of when the film pushes its luck a little too far, mostly because the build-up for the film’s darkest/kinkiest imagery just isn’t there. It goes too far too quickly, so when the time comes to pull back for the emotional climax, it doesn’t work. Yes, the story is meant to be a tragedy, but Emerald’s version doesn’t play it like that, it plays like a standard “He’s broken but I can fix him” romance so when things turn degrading, the build up just doesn’t work. He goes from slightly annoying to downright monstrous with nothing to between and it just feels jarring in a way that doesn’t feel intentional, just out of place in THIS version of the story (again, I’m aware that Heathcliff being a bastard is a big thing in the story, but in Emerald’s version it feels different)
Indeed, “Wuthering Heights” itself does tend to have a tendency to go too far and some of that works and some doesn’t. Opening the film with a hanging corpse ejaculating in its pants doesn’t really work that well, but a brutal scene of Heathcliff being beaten as a child is well handled and feels essential for the story. It’s not that the boundary-pushing moments are bad, it’s that some of them seem to be pointlessly done for shock value without much aid to the story. However, when the film does use those moments well, it heightens the entire experience to create something that fits the heightened tone of the whole movie. It feels like the director is trying to top herself after Saltburn, except the extreme shocking moments in Saltburn (licking the bathtub, fucking the grave, the naked dance around the house) all helped with the story of obsession and made it more interesting while this film just does shocking moments so the audience has something to gasp about, and it doesn’t really need them or use them well enough to be something.
It also really helps that “Wuthering Heights” might be the most gorgeous-looking film of the year, it’s certainly going to be one of them. It’s a film that’s not afraid of bold visual choices, the use of fog to create darkly gorgeous imagery, entire rooms painted in bold monochrome colours that just envelop the screen, and costumes so over the top and gorgeous that you half expect to hear RuPaul yell an awful pun as they’re paraded around on screen. It’s a stunning display of visual prowess, sumptuous in every possible way you could imagine. It’s so mesmerising to look at that you can almost forgive the faults of the film purely because it looks so good. Everything from a broken egg to Margot Robbie’s face is filmed with precision to make sure that everything looks as beautiful as possible. Jacob Elordi really needs to just keep working with Emerald because no one has ever filmed that man quite like she does and it’s actually staggering how good she makes him look (Margot doesn’t need help on that front, the Barbie movie literally had to lampshade that she always looks perfect to make an emotional moment work)
By using the story of Wuthering Heights and twisting it to fit her unique vision, Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” ends up being this interestingly dark, twisted tale of love that could never be and when it works, it really works. When it doesn’t, it can feel uncomfortable (in a non-entertaining way), at times trying too hard to shock in a way that honestly just feels out of place in this version of the story. While I do appreciate that Emerald is let loose and allowed to make the wild shit she clearly enjoys making, some of this stuff should probably be held back to enhance the story. Those people who are big fans of the book might have problems with the changes, understandably so, but “Wuthering Heights” certainly has enough going for it that you should at least let it in your window.
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