It was probably sensible for writer/director Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn) to stylise the title treatment of her new version of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel with quotation marks. It’s a fair warning to not expect complete fidelity to the text – and sets the tone for something a little more arch, playful and scandalising, guaranteed to stir up heated discourse among literary purists. But if you meet Wuthering Heights on its own terms and give yourself over to Fennell’s bold vision, it’s hard not to get swept up in this gothic tale of toxic attachment.
Charli XCX’s soundtrack is emblematic of the film as a whole, a modern remix of classic material. Like everything else about Wuthering Heights, it’s maximalist – there’s not a single dial that isn’t cranked to its limit. If you’re unfamiliar with the story from the classic novel or the myriad adaptations before this one, at the centre are Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie, also producer) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi). Like most previous adaptations, this departs from the novel by casting a white Heathcliff, though there is colour-blind casting among the supporting characters.
The story begins when they’re kids: she lives in the evocatively named farmhouse of the title with her father (an excellent Martin Clunes – no, really) who randomly brings orphan Heathcliff home one day. The younger Cathy and Heathcliff are played by Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper (who proves Adolescence wasn’t a fluke). His social status rules him out as husband material despite their mutual obsession – and a wealthy new family in the area is destined to drive a wedge between them.
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi embrace on the Moors of ‘Wuthering Heights’. CREDIT: Warner Bros.
From the off, it’s about sex and death. A cheeky audio rug-pull leads into a public hanging. It sets the OTT baseline from which the rest of the film will operate, with a knowing, wicked sense of humour. It practically squelches with excess; there are fluids dripping everywhere, from snail trails to bodily emissions to the eggs Heathcliff and Cathy leave in each other’s beds. But while you sense that Fennell is delighting in toying with a classic, it doesn’t feel like provocation for the sake of it. It’s all in service of the intense, visceral bond that exists between Cathy and Heathcliff, one that has left them damned and doomed since their youth.
There’s a (very funny) scene that recaps Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet, as if to set the tragic benchmark. But Cathy and Heathcliff aren’t so much star-crossed lovers as imploding supernovas whose gravitational pull distorts everyone around them. Robbie is unafraid of playing up Cathy’s brattiness and selfishness, while Elordi – with his spot-on regional accent – has a combustible magnetism that bristles throughout the film. His temper and her jealousy are too hot, too greedy, as Kate Bush might say, and the same applies to the spicy sex scenes that are much edgier than your standard Victorian lit adaptation.
Those are among many liberties taken by Fennell, but like some of the costume and production design choices that kick in once Cathy is ensconced in her new life, they feel like intuitive and intentional decisions. She’s kept like a doll (literally, in one amusingly meta sequence), and the opulent trappings of her new life are sharply juxtaposed with the elemental, instinctive connection she has with Heathcliff. While it’s not the definitive take on the text, it’s a full-blooded and invigorating reimagining that prioritises feelings over faithfulness, to memorable results.
Details
- Director: Emerald Fennell
- Starring: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau
- Release date: February 13 (in UK cinemas)
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