Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” doesn’t merely play on the big, silver screen, it unleashes all the forces of horny darkness into your theater. That’s because Emerald Fennell is a sensationalist of the highest possible order. She’s like a lurid fireworks factory wielding an old-timey megaphone, calling the shots, calling cut, and in between each take demanding more, more, more.
Giving “Wuthering Heights” to a director like Emerald Fennell is like giving nuclear launch codes to the Joker. We know they’re going to do something outrageous, and we’re nervous about it. Emily Brontë’s 1847 tragedy has been adapted to the screen many times, and filmmakers usually trim the novel down to its most salacious chapters. Filmmakers also usually make the hunky, spurned, yet diabolical lover, Heathcliff, into a white guy, even though the novel clearly describes him as a person of color, which has a direct impact on how he’s treated throughout the story, and of course informs the class warfare themes of the novel.
Emerald Fennell’s adaptation, written by Fennell herself, also cuts “Wuthering Heights” down to its bare bones, and she also goes way out of her way to perpetuate the weird fantasy that this romance was always gossamer white. Her “Wuthering Heights” has all the melodrama, all the lust, but none of the complexity. It’s hyper-stylized, filmed as though every frame was a tantalizing erotic novel cover. You can’t deny that this film is incredibly pulpy. You also can’t deny that making “Wuthering Heights” incredibly pulpy, and nothing more, is — as the kids like to say — a choice.
“Wuthering Heights” stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as Cathy and Heathcliff. She’s the daughter of a rich landowner, Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes), who rapidly drinks their family fortune away. Mr. Earnshaw took Heathcliff in as a young boy, rescuing him from public abuse, so Heathcliff could instead endure Earnshaw’s private abuse, for decades. Heathcliff was protecting Cathy the whole time. He’s in love with her, and although she refuses to admit it, she’s got feelings for him.
One day, the manor next to Wuthering Heights gets purchased by Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), who moves in with his weird ward Isabella (Alison Oliver). Edgar falls in love with Cathy and asks her to marry him, but she finally figures out she’s in love — or at least in lust — with Heathcliff, right after they watched BDSM pony play in the barn together, and also after he watched her masturbate on the moors. This is, indeed, an Emerald Fennell production.
Long story short — since it’s a very long story — there’s a big misunderstanding, Heathcliff runs away for five years, and Cathy enters a loveless but affluent marriage with Edgar. When Heathcliff finally returns, having made his fortune, shaved his beard and deepened the chip on his shoulder, these two walking hormones can barely contain their forbidden passions. Everything goes very sexily, and then very wrong.
Emerald Fennell likes watching Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie make out, and she’s betting the audience will too. She’s probably right, and Linus Sandgren’s opulent cinematography transforms all their snogging sessions into elaborate pay-per-view events. Jacob Elordi is not allowed to merely enter a scene with Margot Robbie, he must instead appear in the distance, unveiled by fog, then tower slowly over her like a lusty Godzilla. These are both very attractive people, but Elordi is attractive and mountainous, and Fennell never lets us forget it.
Production designer Suzie Davies turns Wuthering Heights, the estate, into an obsidian abstract showpiece, all but Lovecraftian in its malevolence. Meanwhile, Linton manor looks like Pee-wee’s Playhouse, if “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” was directed by Dario Argento. There are rooms that evoke human flesh, with veins and freckles on the walls. At least one of the hallways is a fallopian tube. The mantelpiece above the fireplace is constructed out of human hands carved from marble. The tired old gag is that the nouveau riche have terrible taste, but this isn’t just terrible taste, it’s madness.
In Fennell’s eyes, “Wuthering Heights” isn’t just a great story, a classic novel, or a sexy, f–ked up romance. It’s THE great story, THE classic novel, and THE sexy f–ked up romance. She directs “Wuthering Heights” with the same dramatic magnitude that George Lucas employed in the original “Star Wars,” as though an adolescent’s imagination was unleashed, untethered from moderation or shame, with the sole purpose of revealing to the world how they viewed their inspirations. And like “Star Wars,” Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is gargantuan, luxurious, captivating, and seemingly oblivious to the possibility that the filmmaker’s take on this material might be racist.
“Wuthering Heights” features only two characters of color — Edgar, and Cathy’s servant Nelly (Hong Chau), both of Asian descent — and they exist only to ruin Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship, something Fennell’s adaptation considers unforgivable. Brontë had a point to make about the psychic damage left behind by abuse and social inequity. Fennell’s simplified version doesn’t get into any of that, and instead lends itself to at least one disturbing interpretation, about Asian interlopers ruining iconic white romances (even a romance where one of the lovers was not supposed to be white). The pervasive evidence that supports this take may, perhaps, have been accidental, a persistent flight of the filmmaker’s subconscious. But that wouldn’t make it any better.
Emerald Fennell opens “Wuthering Heights” with a large audience visibly aroused by their own bloodlust. The impetus for their horny ghoulishness is a hanging, which leaves the corpse visibly and publicly erect, which several young people giggle about. We are to believe, perhaps, that Fennell is making a point that audiences crave sex, violence and emotional trauma for the sake of our own immature personal amusement, and again, she’s probably right. But then “Wuthering Heights” does that exact thing, unironically, in slow-motion, so it’s not so much making a point as it is calling its shots.
“Wuthering Heights” isn’t so much an adaptation as it is a book report that would lead to a very uncomfortable parent-teacher conference. It exaggerates all the horny, moist intercourse and soap operatic betrayals, downplays all the substance, and makes room for problematic interpretations for reasons that baffle the mind. Damn it, this movie looks good, but damn it, this movie ain’t good.
