Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star as two star-crossed lovers in Emerald Fennell’s two-star adaptation. Here’s our Wuthering Heights review. You’ve stumbled across the Film Stories Newsletter! To get this sort of thing in your inbox every Friday, subscribe here. Hello! We’re scandalised, shocked, surprised and stupefied to report that “Wuthering Heights” isn’t sexy enough. Read ... Wuthering Heights review | Emerald Fennell’s adaptation is limp and disappointing
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star as two star-crossed lovers in Emerald Fennell’s two-star adaptation. Here’s our Wuthering Heights review.
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When Emerald Fennell announced she was tackling Emily Brontë’s gothic novel, Wuthering Heights, I was equally excited and scared for what the Saltburn director might do. The trailer had me convinced she might be on to something. A scandalously erotic take on the classic story could be just the pearl-clutching sizzle reel cinema needs, especially since erotic films have been very fashionable recently.
But did she deliver on the trailer’s promise?
“Wuthering Heights”, stylised with quotation marks, is now in cinemas. If you’re heading in expecting something very, very steamy, with two good-looking stars giving into their desires while Brontë’s themes of revenge, class and love are given a new twist, you might find yourself very, very disappointed.
Like most adaptations of the novel, Fennell focuses on Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff’s (Jacob Elordi) romance from the first half of the book. Cathy’s older brother, Hindley, has been erased, his character smushed into Mr. Earnshaw (played by Martin Clunes, an absolutely brilliant piece of casting) who now brings the orphan Heathcliff home as a pet for his spirited young daughter before deciding he hates everyone and everything.
Years wear on, and the Earnshaws’ financial situation worsens. Cathy and Heathcliff harbor feelings for each other secretly but Heathcliff runs away when Cathy promises to marry the rich, dull Mr. Linton next door to save her family from complete ruin. Elordi’s anti-hero shows up a few years later (with short hair this time, because symbolism) and their love story gets even more complicated.
If there was a word to describe Emerald Fennell’s two previous films, it would be ‘daring’. The English actress and director did not hold back as she made us watch Carey Mulligan being choked by patriarchy in Promising Young Woman, and Barry Keoghan drinking semen-laced water in Saltburn. But “Wuthering Heights” is her most docile film, and all the worse for it. I didn’t need anyone shagging a grave, but a little genuine eroticism was sorely missed.
Not only has Fennell simplified the book’s themes, especially when it comes to revenge, she seems too scared to truly provoke. This “Wuthering Heights” isn’t really that different from previous adaptations, unless you count some of the PVC dresses Robbie’s character wears and the fact that her bedroom wall looks like skin.
If you’re looking for shock value, that’s mostly detained in the film’s opening scene. We hear someone gasp for air, convinced they’re experiencing the greatest pleasure of their lives. No spoilers here, but that’s not the case. Along with the trailer, this scene promises something carnal that dares you to keep watching.
Boldness isn’t making a character bark like a dog, or having a couple use horse reins in a post-watershed way. Boldness is offering your audience something unique and not apologising for it. Fennell includes a couple of moments like this, but the movie quickly runs off with its tail between its legs. Fennell’s idea of kinky, passionate sex seems to be Elordi shoving his fingers in the moaning Robbie’s mouth again and again. This is eroticism that wouldn’t make Fifty Shades Of Grey blush.
This is before Robbie and Elordi’s casting controversy, which leaves a bad taste in the mouth before the opening credits even roll. The 35-year-old Robbie plays the 15-year-old Cathy as she accepts Mr. Linton’s proposal, and Heathcliff’s race, ambiguously non-white in the novel (he’s described equally as “dark-skinned gypsy”, “pale” and “Lascar”) makes Elordi’s casting a little questionable. He and Robbie have chemistry for days, but even that doesn’t seem quite enough to get the stench out.
The film’s final scene is both visually gorgeous and very emotional on its own, but by that point we’re 120 minutes into a story that’s otherwise failed to wring a single iota of feeling from its audience. It’s too little, too late, and pales in comparison to cinema’s other tragic love stories.
There’s so much potential here, but “Wuthering Heights” is like bad sex: it just doesn’t hit the spot.
“Wuthering Heights” is in cinemas now.
