‘WUTHERING HEIGHTS’ Review: Emerald Fennell’s Bold & Brilliant Reimagining of Classic Filmmaking

Courtney Howard // Film Critic

“WUTHERING HEIGHTS”

Rated R, 2 hour and 16 minutes

Directed by: Emerald Fennell

Starring: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Alison Oliver, Shazad Latif, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell, Amy Morgan, Charlotte Mellington, Owen Cooper, Vy Nguyen

It’s established within the first few seconds of “WUTHERING HEIGHTS” that writer-director Emerald Fennell’s reinterpretation of Emily Brontë’s beloved novel isn’t going to be a straight, 1:1 translation of the literary text, nor is it going to be like any other filmmaker’s adaptation before it, of which there have been a litany (including one for MTV that featured songs by Jim Steinman). She opens her film revealing the theme of deception, putting the onus on the audience to extrapolate the sounds we first hear (but don’t yet see) of heavy breathing and tightening rope bondage as a sexual act or something else, subtly asking us if we trust our ears or our eyes. These visceral sounds are actually from a grotesque hanging, and our misunderstanding doubles as a cheeky little tip of the cap to Fennell’s signature flourish connecting sex and violence.

By giving us a psychological grounding point, Fennell is able to draw a similar thematic schism that’s repeated throughout the picture, manifesting as a deep exploration of the struggle between our heroine and her heartthrob’s heads and hearts – the deceitful lies they tell themselves to survive and those society dictates to them. She and her creative collaborators deliver a god-tier new classic that expertly captures the breathtaking ache and essence of desire. Her vision is intoxicating, transcendent, tantalizing, bewitching, swoon-worthy and hypnotic. And while it may not encapsulate everything the book entails, what the filmmaker engages with adds an innovative, exhilarating and anachronistic spin on the time-honored source material.

We first meet Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) in her youth, jaunting around town and Yorkshire’s windy moors with companion Nelly (Vy Nguyen). Cathy’s arrogant drunkard dad Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes) has just brought a young orphaned boy (Owen Cooper) around her age to their dank, inhospitable home, Wuthering Heights. Though he intends to make his new charge a stable boy, Cathy intends to make him her pet, naming him Heathcliff. The boy tends to the land, home and animals, as well as sacrificing himself at the brutish hands of Cathy’s abusive, ill-tempered father to spare her any physical harm. And, as they grow up, Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) continues to forfeit his own well-being at the behest of Cathy’s (Margot Robbie) comfort, breaking his chair to be kindling for a fire to keep her warm.

However, Cathy and Heathcliff’s circumstances – which have become more financially fraught and sexually-charged – are about to change. Wealthy textile merchant Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif) and his younger, naive sister Isabella (Alison Oliver) have moved into the neighboring property, Thrushcross Grange. Desperate to meet the pair, Cathy snoops on them, breaks her ankle and makes their acquaintance. They invite her to convalesce at their bright, luxurious mansion for weeks on end as Heathcliff broods around Wuthering Heights. Edgar has proposed marriage – and after Heathcliff overhears the news through Cathy’s conversation with Nelly (Hong Chau), he quickly leaves. As Earnshaw has gambled and drunk the family fortune away, marrying Edgar would mean an act of self-preservation on Cathy’s part and a denial of her love of Heathcliff. After postponing her inevitable wedding day, she reluctantly accepts fate, marrying Edgar. She finds no genuine satisfaction in his embrace, but welcomes his material goods. Only upon the return of Heathcliff, now a self-made man of wealth, does Cathy feel more tormented by her desires.

Fennell foreshadows the tortured twosome’s doomed romance with deft aplomb. Cathy’s troubled presence feels foreboding, from Isabella’s initial description of her visage as “ghostly” to the visual reference drawn of Cathy’s haunted expression barely concealed behind a ginormous, ethereal veil trailing behind her with the wily, windy Moors augmenting her ghost-like appearance. Heathcliff’s fiery passions, temper and angst are tied to environments like the rain-filled clouds, thick rolling fog and the burning red sunset sky. Montages carry hefty weight, courtesy of Charli xcx’s soundtrack selections (acting as a secondary voice for Cathy’s psyche) and editor Victoria Boydell’s clean cuts, setting the mood and atmospheric pull of the picture. Composer Anthony Willis’ score evokes the emotional undertow accompanying character-driven sequences.

Cathy isn’t a perfect heroine, nor is Heathcliff a spotless hero. In Fennell’s adaptation, she makes it clear the dynamic duo are engaging in toxic behaviors, destroying everyone caught in the couple’s riptide. Cathy shows she’s inherited her father’s prickly personality and sharp tongue when pressed by desires of the women in her circle, like Nelly’s enduring want to rise above her station as Cathy’s personal plaything/ servant and Isabella’s innocent confession to Cathy of her crush on Heathcliff. Heathcliff’s mind games toying with Cathy and later Isabella feed off jealousy, spite and insecurity starting life as a man of no means. Rest assured comeuppance is laced with tragedy.

Fennell, along with production designer Suzie Davies and cinematographer Linus Sandgren, create two fully immersive worlds that their characters inhabit – two strikingly disparate homes in which the tragedies unfold. Their work is spellbinding and sublime. Natural light that manages to break through the constant cloud cover and pour through the windows of Wuthering Heights’ claustrophobic quarters is stifled, whereas the un-blighted sunshine that graces Thrushcross Grange’s sprawling, lavishly garnished grounds is effused with saturated warmth.

Both costume and production design take classic architectural silhouettes and shake them up, gifting these designs with a radically irreverent, contemporarily textured aesthetic. Thrushcross Grange’s dining room walls appear beaded with sweat. The hands motif that adorns the library’s fireplace, sconces and ceiling fixtures emphasizes narrative power grabs and an overall tactile sense. Though red and blue get a proper workout, the use of emerald green is applied to the men who treat Cathy as possession, from the green wine bottles that litter Earnshaw’s formal room to Edgar’s bed chambers. Wuthering Heights is progressively swallowed by its surrounding hostile landscape, cutting through the home’s wood walls. When Cathy returns home to visit her ailing father, the outside looks fractured and jagged. Craggy, sharp sediment and splotches of dark mold adorn the dining room walls as decoration, akin to the decay within its master. The diamond shaped windows through which Heathcliff and Cathy peer into each other’s rooms across the cavernous divide of a courtyard reflect their unbreakable bond.

The concept of bondage is not solely reserved for the narrative, initially deployed during a formative sexual encounter Cathy and Heathcliff witness in their late adolescence. It’s also a visual thematic woven throughout Jacqueline Durran’s modern-edged wardrobe stylization, from Cathy’s strappy corsets to Isabella’s ribbons woven through braided hair. Fabrics utilized for Cathy’s tightly woven, heavy natural-fiber constructed costumes sway towards synthetic and modern once she transitions into a higher class. Her color palette is painfully distilled to red, white and black. Isabella’s pastel wardrobe selections are more Southern Belle, her girlhood innocence decorated with frills, lace and ribbons.

While Cathy tends to be overdramatic about her circumstances, Robbie crafts a refined, perfectly-pitched performance. She infuses her broken-hearted selfishness with a potent sense of empathy. Elordi is the total package. He’s compelling, charismatic, romantic and dastardly, playing the clash of chivalry and cruelty with command. But it’s within his character’s abject devastation where the actor is at his most heartbreaking and vulnerable. Robbie and Elordi’s chemistry ignites the screen. Sex scenes are steamy and tastefully lensed. Edgar is made a sympathetic pawn in Latif’s capable hands. Still, it’s Oliver who is the film’s MVP. She’s a true revelation, all at once effervescent, charming and provocative.

Fennell proves a worthy addition to the growing roster of filmmakers who’ve refused to make a faithful adaptation of Brontë’s novel, thus screwing over schoolkids everywhere who are looking for a CliffsNotes-esque shortcut for their pending book reports. That some corners of social media have been quick to dismissively and derogatorily label this “fan fiction” as if Peter Jackson’s padded, terrible HOBBIT films weren’t exactly that (or at least called out as vociferously at the time of their release) says a lot about our current culture’s misogynist leanings and Fennell being an unwitting lightning rod for it. Nevertheless, she’s crafted her best film to date – one that feels like a decadent homage to the sweeping melodrama of golden era Hollywood.

Grade: A

“WUTHERING HEIGHTS” opens in theaters on February 13.