Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ had purists losing their minds from the get-go. They lost their minds at the casting – Margot Robbie is too old for Cathy; Jacob Elordi is too white for Heathcliff – and then lost their minds at the trailer, which is all heaving bosoms and kinky vibes set to Charli XCX beats. But Fennell has made it clear that it is her vision of Emily Brontë’s novel, hence the quotation marks around the title, and that she wants it to feel as she felt when she first read the book at 14 years old. I was willing to cut her considerable slack but did her 14-year-old self, I had to wonder, make it to the end? Who, in their right mind, would sell it as a Valentine’s date film if they had? I may be on #TeamPurist here.
This ‘Wuthering Heights’ is a teenage sex dream that ends halfway through the book
Fennell, who is a provocateur and usually a splendid one (Promising Young Woman; Saltburn), starts as she means to go on. That is, non-canonically. Instead of Mr Lockwood as the framing device (if you know you know), it opens with a public hanging, which seems to excite little Cathy (Charlotte Mellington). And then it’s her father, Mr Earnshaw (Martin Clunes), bringing an orphan boy back to dark, dirty Wuthering Heights where rain lashes constantly. (I was reminded of that W.C. Fields film where he is holed up in a cabin in winter and every time he opens the door he gets a bucket of snow in the face.) The boy is given a name, Heathcliff, who is described in the novel as ‘dark-skinned’, but that is swerved with Owen Cooper in the role. Cathy and Heathcliff are brought up as quasi-siblings, exploring the majestic Yorkshire landscape, and as this has excised Hindley, her cruel brother, it’s up to Mr Earnshaw to administer Heathcliff’s savage whippings. Clunes, who plays Earnshaw as a self-pitying drunk, may steal this from under everybody.
They grow up to become Robbie and Elordi and now sex enters the frame. The first time it does so is after Cathy spies the servants, Joseph (Ewan Mitchell) and Zillah (Amy Morgan), getting up to some S&M mischief. (Joseph and Zillah? Who’d have thought?) Cathy is so aroused that she dashes to the moors and pleasures herself behind a rock. She is spotted by Heathcliff and tries to run away in shame but he catches up, lifts her by a single string of the bodice (he’s a strong fella all right) and licks each of her fingers. It’s sexual longing via KFC. I didn’t quite know where to look. I hoped he’d know not to touch food until he’d washed his hands, but I doubt it.
He runs away when he overhears Cathy say she will marry Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif) from neighbouring Thrushcross Grange, which is now a highly stylised mini-palace with jewel-like interiors, tables laden with jellies and, for some reason, a fireplace that’s cascading hands in plaster. Even that may not be as distracting as Cathy’s increasingly bizarre outfits which will have you asking yourself: is that latex? Is that clingfilm? Is that tin foil? Heathcliff returns, after five years, as a wealthy man who still wants Cathy, now Mrs Linton, but spitefully courts Isabella, Edgar’s sister – sorry, she’s now his ‘ward’ – played by Alison Oliver as a comical, simpering weirdo. Most odd.
This ‘Wuthering Heights’ is a teenage sex dream that ends halfway through the book, which is maybe where 14-year-old Fennell stopped. In fact, in this version, neither Cathy nor Heathcliff have children, which means there can be no trauma passed on to the next generation, which is totally at the heart of this dark, complex, brutal novel that shouldn’t be a Valentine’s date, I promise you. Fennell’s treatment is eye-catching but superficial and because Robbie’s Cathy is like a capricious Scarlett O’Hara and Elordi’s Heathcliff is a hot boyfriend who broods, you can never buy into them as deeply connected soulmates. #TeamPurist all the way.
Comments