Since the first trailer for Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” was released, I’ve been obsessed with finding out why they’re selling the film with the quotation marks around the title. Five minutes into the film, I figured out why.
This isn’t Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. This is very much Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” with quotations, a few exclamation points, and maybe a dollar sign. Purists who feel deep connections with the 1847 novel will probably be endlessly annoyed with this loose “adaptation” of the source material.
I have no real connection to the novel, so I can only look at the film as an outsider with a very basic knowledge of Brontë’s plot. I know Brontë took great care to accurately describe and set her story in the Yorkshire moors of Northern England. While some of the new film was shot in those very locations, Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is set somewhere between a water-worn cover of a bodice-ripping romance novel and the liminal state between death and rebirth known as the bardo. The sky is red and false, the moon large and painted, the sex both chaste and rough.
Cathy (a strong, but terribly miscast Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (a brooding, but terribly miscast Jacob Elordi) are two monstrous humans whose love is so toxic, dangerous, and unhealthy that it doesn’t just destroy everyone around them, but also poisons the picturesque surrounding countryside. This obsession turns the windswept estate of Wuthering Heights into a filthy and decaying hell and Thrushcross Grange from a lavish manor into a grotesque, Cronenbergian nightmare of flesh-colored longing.
Are we supposed to root for Cathy and Heathcliff to get over themselves and build something healthy together? I have no idea. The way that Fennell writes these characters makes me think she despises them both and takes pleasure in putting them in a life-size dollhouse and leaving it out in the rain. Cathy is a narcissist, at best, and Heathcliff is, without question, a sociopath with some murderous tendencies, so spending 140-minutes waiting to see if they get together is tantamount to caring if the most toxic couple you know are calling it quits or not. It’s fun to watch, but don’t expect real emotional investment.
That’s the biggest problem with “Wuthering Heights” in a nutshell: it’s a stunning facade with nothing behind the expertly painted backdrops. Don’t get me wrong, Elordi and Robbie have so much chemistry that the film must be impossible to watch for their significant others, but don’t we need more than sexiness here? When Heathcliff picks up Cathy by her corset with one hand, I might have said under my breath, “More like Jacob OhLordy,” but I can’t tell if Fennell thinks her audience is rooting for their eternal love or anxiously anticipating their breakup sex.
With a transcendent original soundtrack by Charli XCX, breathtaking cinematography from Linus Sandgren, and a film-stealing performance from Alison Oliver (who also managed to steal HBO’s Task last year), “Wuthering Heights” is still a wildly entertaining bit of camp that is too hetero to become a queer cult classic and too actively unintelligent to please classic lit fans. What we’re left with is the cinematic equivalent of culinary fusion, but instead of a perfect distillation of umami like Thai barbecue, we’re left with something off-putting like spaghetti and bananas or shrimp with cottage cheese.
“Wuthering Heights” also feels achingly, obsessively horny, while stranding Robbie and Elordi to summon sexual heat by just making out constantly and putting their fingers in each other’s mouths. I didn’t necessarily expect Elordi to hang dong, but I’m still surprised a movie so animalistic with its urges and impulses acts like French kissing is the height of romantic sex. The kinkiness and rough stuff that comes into play in the third act is winked at like a perversion that Fennell thinks is adorable, but refuses to take seriously.
After Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, Fennell proved that she could make movies that felt immediately like a product of their time and I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment or not. I’ve never gone back to rewatch either film because I feel like they already stained my brain from seeing them the first time — and “Wuthering Heights” is more of the same. You’ll get everything you need from it on the first try.
I have so many conflicting feelings about “Wuthering Heights” that it’s hard to know whether I even liked it or not. Visually dazzling, emotionally inert. Maximalist production, minimalist writing. Prurient and chaste. Decadent, but hollow. Messy and mannered. I know I was entertained, but I’m not sure it’s actually a good movie or says anything about romance, obsessive love, or the human condition.
The film is like a deceptively shallow pool. You’ll break your neck trying to dive in because the water looks refreshing and sure seems deep from far away. But maybe you’ll die with a smile.
Grade: D+