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Emerald Fennell’s psychedelic adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” declares that it will play by its own rules right at the start. The opening teases us with the sound of a man’s breathy groaning and subtle moaning over a dark, blank screen. Also audible are quickening creaks of wood as the grunting intensifies—the screen might be pictureless, but the erotic suggestion is clear as daylight.
Once the moving image appears to match what we’ve just heard, though, it is, surprisingly, not of a sexual act like Fennell has implied, but of a man being hanged at a town square, desperately trying to hold onto his final reserves of life. It’s a period-defining and admittedly subversive kick off for Fennell’s loose—very loose—interpretation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 book, the sole novel of the English author and poet that mainly tells the story of two star-crossed lovers, Catherine (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi), in the late 18th-century England. It’s a dare, and an invitation to experience all the ways Fennell herself felt the arousing sway of the classic, where she sees lust and demise as two inseparable sides of the same coin, if her opening is any indication.
The supporting cast fair no better. Edward Linton (Shazad Latif) is also retooled, now a nice but dull man who lives in a house so antithetical to his sensibilities it’s laughable we’re asked to believe he decorated it in such a manner. His ward Isabella Linton is a simple, spoiled young woman in awe of Cathy until she sets her sights on Heathcliff; Alison Oliver fairs well as the comic relief, though the character’s quick progression from helpless innocent to apparently willing submissive feels like an enormous jump. The standout in the cast is good old Martin Clunes as Cathy’s miserable drunkard father Mr. Earnshaw – a scene where he mocks Heathcliff’s affection for Cathy stands out as a highlight and one of the few instances where the emotional stakes of Wuthering Heights feel sincere. But Fennell can’t help but play his death for laughs, as if the film is allergic to letting anything too grimly tragic linger on screen.
In sanding down Heathcliff’s brutality he becomes less complex, reduced to a beautiful sad man with a broad Keighley accent and some billowing shirts. Fennell instead squarely positions Cathy’s maid Nelly (Hong Chau) as the true villain of the saga, a scheming, interfering scold who keeps Cathy and Heathcliff apart out of jealousy and is eventually responsible for the former’s untimely death. Her nuance is also lost in this lavish restaging, written off as the envy of a noble’s daughter born out of wedlock who can’t stand to see Cathy and Heathcliff happy. It’s a thankless role for Chau and absolves Cathy and Heathcliff, essentially writing off their own bad behaviour as little more than childish hair-pulling. (This is now the second film where Fennell has positioned a lower class character as the mastermind of a plot to bring down poor, helpless rich people.)
