Writer/director Emerald Fennell is back with another divisive flick as she tackles Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star in this Valentine’s release that has had a massive marketing push.
Alas, as Film News Blitz’s Dan Lawrence writes, Wuthering Heights is beautiful and shallow at best.
Rating: ⭐⭐
What is ‘Wuthering Heights’ about?
Wuthering Heights has received countless adaptations on stage and screen.
Brontë’s novel is a gothic, intense, psychological drama set on the Yorkshire moors.
When Catherine Earnshaw chooses social and financial stability over love, the obsessive Heathcliffe dedicates his life to enacting emotional turmoil in revenge.
Fennell’s film follows Cathy (Robbie) and Heathcliffe (Elordi), which spins this tale into one of missed opportunities, love, lust and loss.
What works in the new ‘Wuthering Heights’ film?
Wuthering Heights is visually stunning; that is abundantly clear.
Production design, stunning natural locations and exquisite costumes are well-captured to show off their objective beauty, as are the model-like features of Robbie and Elordi.
Sadly, beyond stunning visuals, this Wuthering Heights film hasn’t got much else going for it.
What doesn’t work in the new ‘Wuthering Heights’ film?
Even without reading Brontë’s original novel, one can tell that this film adaptation doesn’t capture its entire complexity.
For one, the torment being thrown from Cathy to Heathcliffe, and vice versa, is petty at best.
Physiological torment is not the name of the game here, and instead the central relationship gives over to lust, vindictivenss and selfish intent.
There’s also very little characterisation to chew on, as Robbie’s Cathy spends the majority of the film in tears or manipulating those around her, but having little agency beyond this.
Heathcliffe, meanwhile, feels more like Cathy’s pet than anything else.
This thin characterisation doesn’t help endear an audience to the plight of either romantic lead, and instead, you’re rooting against the pair of them.
The marketing build-up to this film heavily leant into raunchiness and romance.
Robbie herself has mentioned a private screening for her girlfriends related to her infatuation with Elordi’s on-screen portrayal of Heathcliffe.
But, in all honesty, the intimate scenes in this film are, for the most part, glossed over or resigned to montage.
This is in direct contrast to the film’s marketing and indeed its opening scene, which shows several onlookers engaging in sexual activity in broad daylight as a faceless/nameless criminal is hanged from a noose.
The opening sequence makes one feel as if Fennell will make good on her promise of a ‘swing for the fences’, teenage-girl fantasy version of Wuthering Heights, but the film isn’t brave enough to go full tilt into this mould.
Instead, you have a halfway house, whereby you’re given a glancing summary of the original text, with not enough ingredients to excite.
In summary, like the intentions of the central characters, this film is merely one of shallow beauty with only a thought for aesthetics.
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