Film Review: Wuthering Heights
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Oh Aretha Franklin, it’s on days like today that I just want to say an extra thank you to you. Not just for your wonderful music and contributions to the art form, but by bestowing upon us one of the greatest phrases of all time: Great gowns, beautiful gowns. I say this because there might not be a more apt reason to use the phrase as a descriptor than having just finished screening Wuthering Heights. Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of the classic tale proves that style is not a good substitution for substance.
I must inform you dear reader, that I have never liked Wuthering Heights – not the book, not the 1939 adaptation that was nominated for Best Picture, the Andrea Arnold one which boldly put a POC in the lead, and unfortunately, not this version either. The twisted “love” story between Cathy and Heathcliff has always failed to register with me as anything more than an exercise in torment and boredom. I am going to give the Japanese version I was made aware of this week a try in the hopes that I can find that missing thing. Still, with my misgivings I was hoping that this would be the one to work, and was extremely excited to see it due to all the anger Fennell seemed to generate solely from the leaked stills from her set.
Emerald Fennell is a really gifted filmmaker, and I loved her last two films Promising Young Woman and Saltburn. Her kind of insidious look into desire, the ramifications of it, and how that intertwines with privilege is always fascinating and well worth it. I like that people can joke about the psychosexual turns her movies take, cause often this is in service of greater aims, and she boldly goes where few filmmakers who get movies like this desire to go.
Which is what makes her version of Wuthering Heights all the more disappointing, as much of it feels like a woman reheating the nachos of the things she’s done so well in the past. You can see the moments when the past versions of her leap out like when Heacliff licks the fingers of Cathy who has just been fingering herself or in the fact that a room is designed to look like the skin of a character, down to the freckle.
However everything else just feels stale, which for a gothic romance is a wild thing to contemplate. It truly boils down to everything thing feeling like artifice, this particular tale, from this particular company of people yearns for a more bolder, freakier, more rough and tumble expression. The moors don’t feel particularly exotic or emotional, sure they’re beautifully photographed but there’s always an element of remove. DP Linus Sandgren and costume designer Jacquline Duran certainly put in the work to make this a very showy picture, but outside of one or two moments, this movie feels like its missing texture. All the work done by these artists and craftsman does not elevate the tale we are supposedly seeing.
Worst of all, the movie’s leads cannot make the tale sing the nasty tune it needs. This is supposed to be some sort of twisted love tale, and though Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are both gifted actors, they are woefully miscast in the middle stretch of this tale, as neither actor reads young enough to truly sell just how silly Cathy and Heathcliff are in their teens and how all consuming their love is meant to be. Especially coming off the beginning portion of the film that chronicles their youth, I wondered for much of the run time how much more effective of story this could have been if the casting mirrored the triptych nature of the script. By the time Elordi and Robbie get to the latter years, and the sex/betrayal ramps up, you feel unreceptive to it, more wondering when these two terrible people will leave us alone. In the age of the Interview with the Vampire television show, which has given us some juicy toxic romance, Wuthering Heights withered on the vine of its script.
Wuthering Heights is a movie that is held together by the scotch tape that is the performances of its supporting cast. Shazad Latif as Edgar is a very staid, but welcoming performance. I’ve been a fan of his work since I saw him in Star Trek Discovery and with his work in last year’s Natilus, he does what he can in terms of imbuing the movie with something genuine. Alison Oliver and Martin Clunes give the movie a bit of edge it so desperately needs any moment either actor is on screen. For my monet, the MVP of this movie is Hong Chau, who once again is in a film so undeserving of her talents, but by virtue of her performance, makes the movie that much more watchable. Thankfully, these four were here to guide me through, or else this movie would have felt night unwatchable.
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