There’s just enough top-of-the-range craft here to recommend Wuthering Heights: dazzling visuals, some solid performances, and a proud sauciness to its presentation make it one of the most vivacious adaptations of the novel. But its insistence on overwhelming the viewer, as well as its lack of restraint in tone or theme, can make it a frustrating, even alienating, watch.
The Brontë sisters are among the great literary giants. While Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is the best-known book from their collective, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, while initially controversial, has a similarly fierce following, partly for its themes of class and its unique observations of complex human connections. Despite a dozen adaptations in film and TV alone, the material continues to inspire intrigue. This latest adaptation, brought to us by Emerald Fennell, certainly captures the book’s emotional scale, yet its lack of subtlety is a double-edged sword.
In the late 1700s, Wuthering Heights is a remote farmhouse home to a drunkard, Mr Earnshaw (Martin Clunes), who takes in children out of the supposed goodness of his heart, only to aggressively demand constant respect. One day, he brings home an illiterate, poverty-stricken boy (Owen Cooper), to the delight of his adoptive daughter, Cathy (Charlotte Mellington). She names the boy Heathcliffe, and the two develop a close connection, the underlinings of romance clear but unacted upon.
Years later, the wealthy Linton family moves into the lavish Thrushcross Grange next door. Having always desired status, Cathy (Margot Robbie) schemes to find her way in, developing rapport with the aristocratic Edgar (Shazad Latif) and his idiosyncratic sister Isabella (Alison Oliver). This upsets Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi), who desires Cathy despite their poverty. Thus, their tumultuous dynamic becomes tested over the years as romances, urgings and grudges rise and fall, the estates of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights serving as physical and emotional battlegrounds.
Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Having previously helmed Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, Emerald Fennell’s directorial approach is quite rambunctious, with colourful set pieces and vibrant scores contrasting with the dark material. However, both films are pretty divisive. Promising Young Woman, while exploring the ways violence against women is systemically enabled, is nihilistic to a fault. Saltburn, meanwhile, tackles the allure of wealth but threatens to dehumanise the working classes cynically. Fennell is undeniably talented, but her glossy, borderline gratuitous style can be as off-putting as it is singular.
Wuthering Heights suffers from a similar conundrum. As an adaptation, Fennell and team understand the novel’s themes and lavish them with life. Fundamentally, a love story between two characters who feel entitled to each other but unable to act on their desires truly, the film plays like a tug-of-war. Cathy and Heathcliffe’s love-hate dynamic paves the way for scrutinising the structure of social class systems and the ways people are marginalised through compartmentalisation. With both characters attempting to find their own way in the world, yet drawn to the sweets of luxury and lust, the divides between gender norms and social classes are on display for all to see.
If we were reviewing the visual look of Wuthering Heights, this would be an easy five stars. Opulence and gothic horror converge in the production design, mirroring the stormy, multidimensional turmoil of the characters. The use of space is particularly distinctive, with the grand, elegant, yet empty spaces of Thrushcross Grange contrasting with the tight, dark rooms and organic simplicity of Wuthering Heights. One is rigid and overly organised, and the other harsh but freeing. The colour red permeates the film with particular vividness, Linus Sandgren’s intimate cinematography allowing feelings of anger and desire to overrun the film through its emphasis on this colour. Visually, the film is a cornucopia of extravagance.
Part of the controversy surrounding Brontë’s book in its initial 1847 release was its depiction of intense obsession, with Cathy and Heathcliffe’s feelings of lust and entitlement for one another giving way to deadly cycles of abuse that were rarely showcased back then. Fennell and team up the intensity factor by making this adaptation explicitly sexual. Not only is this the most carnal of Wuthering Heights adaptations – even entering realms of kink in places – but its dedication to depicting sex and desire adds a voyeuristic feel to the intensity and the avarice.
However, its unambiguous use borders on caricaturistic. As per Fennell’s style, the film is loud and proud in its look and feel, but this results in a film that repeatedly hits you over the head with its ambitions. The themes are compelling, but they are emphasised again and again by the melodramatic dialogue and evocative imagery. Worst of all is the music: in contrast to the period setting, Anthony Willis’s overwhelming score dominates each sequence, while Charlie XCX tracks blurt out so often, and at such volume, that it induces tonal whiplash. In the worst instances, the music completely obfuscates the dialogue. It’s needlessly invasive to a ridiculous degree.
A mixed range of performances also undermines the picture’s ambitions. The acting isn’t bad per se – it’s just that it’s deliberately theatrical, and this may make or break the picture for several viewers.
There are some standouts for sure – Owen Cooper of Adolescence has only a few scenes, but is an absolute scene-stealer with his demonstration of frustration, admiration, and vulnerability. Robbie has her moments of chaotic joy, but her more dramatic moments border on soap opera, with many of the other performances striking an uneasy balance between just right and emotionally over the top. Elordi is a fine actor with a remarkable string of credits to his name – including a recent Oscar nomination – but, putting aside the arguable whitewashing of his role (Heathcliffe was portrayed as racially ambiguous in the book), his swing between over- and underacting makes for an uneasy iteration of this morally grey role. Elordi and Robbie have palpable chemistry together, but amongst the hammy cast and intrusive score, their shared presence is sometimes diminished.
When one adds it all up, we get another Fennell picture that may be as divisive as her past work. There’s just enough top-of-the-range craft here to recommend Wuthering Heights: dazzling visuals, some solid performances, and a proud sauciness to its presentation make it one of the most vivacious adaptations of the novel. But its insistence on overwhelming the viewer, as well as its lack of restraint in tone or theme, can make it a frustrating, even alienating, watch. It’s a case of style overwhelming the substance, but the style is often so alluringly titanic that it just barely keeps this uneven ship afloat.
Wuthering Heights is showing in cinemas nationwide from Friday, February 13.
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