Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights Adaptation Faces Scathing Review
Emerald Fennell's latest cinematic venture, an adaptation of Emily Brontë's classic novel Wuthering Heights, has been met with harsh criticism for its perceived emptiness and failure to capture the essence of the original work. The film, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, is described as astonishingly bad, resembling a limp Mills & Boon romance rather than a faithful interpretation of the Gothic masterpiece.
Performances and Direction Under Fire
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi's performances are almost pushed to the border of pantomime, with their characters feeling thinned out and lacking depth. Robbie portrays Cathy as wilful and spiky, while Elordi's Heathcliff is reduced to a rough but gentle figure, a far cry from the complex, vengeful character in Brontë's novel. Fennell's direction is criticised for its provocations, which seem to define the poor as sexual deviants and the rich as clueless prudes, adding a fetishistic view of class that undermines the story's emotional core.
Adaptation Choices and Narrative Flattening
The film adapts only the first half of the novel, a tradition since earlier versions, but the primary issue lies in its tone. Wuthering Heights is whimperingly tame compared to Fennell's previous works like Promising Young Woman or Saltburn. Fennell's script conflates characters, such as merging Heathcliff's abuser Hindley with Mr Earnshaw, played by Martin Clunes, and making Cathy and Heathcliff equal targets of violence. This flattens the narrative into a simplistic tale of a poor maiden escaping dire circumstances through marriage, while yearning for a penniless soulmate, stripping away the novel's emotional violence and complexity.
Visual and Thematic Missteps
Jacqueline Durran's costumes and Suzie Davies's sets draw from cinephile classics like Jacques Demy's Peau d'âne and Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête, paired with Linus Sandgren's soft cinematography. However, these fantastical elements appear garish when contrasted with Brontë's vivid, thorny language, resembling a live-action Disney film rather than a Gothic work. The film's attempts at sadomasochistic provocation, such as a hanged man with an erection or a woman in a dog collar, fall flat as they are played as jokes, lacking genuine disturbance.
Musical Contributions and Overall Impact
An exception to the criticism is Charli xcx's and Anthony Willis's musical contributions, which offer a sense of dread missing elsewhere. Ultimately, if the film were true to the spirit of reading Wuthering Heights, it would disturb audiences rather than being marketable with brand tie-ins and Valentine's Day screenings. Fennell's loss is Brontë's gain, as the novel remains singular and untarnished by this adaptation.
Directed by Emerald Fennell and featuring a cast including Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, and Ewan Mitchell, the film is rated Cert 15 with a runtime of 136 minutes and released in cinemas from 13 February.
