“WUTHERING HEIGHTS”— 4 STARS
Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” opens in a daring way that stamps both the stylized use of quotation marks appearing on its poster, signifying notes of unrigidity to Emily Brontë’s material, and the very audaciousness of the filmmaker herself. With a dark screen and no orchestration before the credits, we hear a man’s feverish breathing sounds. Triggered by our schema of Fennell and her previous films that confronted all sorts of concupiscence, the quickening pace and urgency of the gasps suggest a coital activity heading towards climax. As the darkness breaks and the first shots of the film appear, we learn the source of those guttural inhalations.
Quite unexpectedly, it’s a hooded man choking at the end of a noose at a public hanging.
His sounds are soon drowned out by the jeering shouts of the assembled crowd, which includes fornicating derelicts, aghast nuns, and eerily fascinated children watching mortality choke away for spectacle. As this introductory imagery unfurls while a Charli XCX song of synth-pop energy begins to blare with the opening titles, Emerald Fennell is trading one presumptive rug pull for another. If you’re wondering where this savage scene occurs in Emily Brontë’s novel, keep looking. You won’t find it. The ballsy opening declares that this “Wuthering Heights” is going places never dreamed of before, and, like the horrified witnesses of this execution, we cannot take our eyes off it.
Sure enough, one of those enthralled kids in the crowd was young Catherine Earnshaw (the debuting Charlotte Mellington), the wild and unruly daughter of the tosspot owner (British TV star Martin Clunes, gracing his first feature film in over a dozen years) of the titular Yorkshire estate. Under the watchful eye of her caretaker, Nelly (fellow newcomer Vy Nguyen), Catherine befriends an abandoned street urchin (Owen Cooper of Adolescence) that her widowed father takes in to be a stable boy. She names him “Heathcliff,” and the two grow incredibly close.
LESSON #1: AFFECTION BUILT ON PROTECTIVE SELF-SACRIFICE— Created tangential to the plot of the original book, Fennell extends this new youth-centered chapter through the first act. “Wuthering Heights” ventures into the territories of abuse emanating from its rough household and harsh rural landscape, as our two leads become each other’s protectors and confidantes. Watching Owen Cooper’s wide-eyed—and, later, Jacob Elordi’s bearded and long-tressed—Heathcliff continuously sacrifice himself to shield Catherine from perceived threats as much as secretly pine for her affections handsomely embeds their powerful bond and punctuates the romantic potential. The swoon is just beginning, and we’re here for it.
Aging into attractive adulthood, Catherine (Barbie herself, Margot Robbie) hangs on to the avaricious hopes of marrying rich and escaping her shoddy home. Her prissy enterprising nets her a proposal from the wealthy Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif of Star Trek: Discovery and What’s Love Got to Do With It?). Though she accepts this golden exit strategy for the decadence and selfish comforts, Catherine confides to Nelly (The Whale’s Academy Award nominee Hong Chau) that her heart will always belong to Heathcliff, an impossible prospect due to his inferior social class.
Before Catherine’s impending nuptials shift her towards a pampered and placid life, the brokenhearted Heathcliff flees Wuthering Heights and England entirely, only to triumphantly return five years later, shined up like a silver sovereign. Boasting new and possibly ill-gotten money, the now-dashing hunk buys the old estate from Mr. Earnshaw, turns heads, weakens the knees of Catherine and her clingy sister-in-law Isabella (Alison Oliver of Saltburn and Conversations with a Friend), and soaks more white shirts than a college spring break in Panama City Beach. Angered and amorous after his time away, Heathcliff’s sole aim is to claim his Cathy with every engorged fiber of his being.
LESSON #2: THE COMPETING LEVELS OF DEVOTION—As this erotic pursuit arrives in the second half of “Wuthering Heights,” the film brims with overwhelming obsession and burns with intoxicating infatuation, all of which stem from multiple levels of devotion. In a scintillating performance that goes far beyond his studly attractiveness, Elordi’s Heathcliff—long a pinnacle literary exemplar of the Byronic hero—doesn’t miss a beat to exude that trope’s mysterious turbulence and melancholic magnetism with his fixation on Cathy. With equal sordid vigor, Robbie acquiesces to the covetous and even nasty demands as a woman tortured by the betrayal of her own heart. These sinful and competitive collisions, besetting spouses and suitors alike, also damage fraught and frazzled observers like Nelly and Isabella, who are pulled into the devolving torment, and Edgar, making his stand to maintain his attempted intimate dominance.
What engages and impresses about Fennell’s take on “Wuthering Heights” is its amplified sensory experience. When a bump in tension or throes is necessary, Charli XCX’s soundtrack inclusions ignite a pulse-increasing rhythm to pair with the serious and sweeping score of composter Anthony Willis (Promising Young Woman). Be ready for one or more of her songs become a throbbing earworm and future Best Original Song Academy Award nominee. That musical combination with the heaving lungs and unminced words spoken aloud can perk every ear in the theater.
On the visual side of “Wuthering Heights,” Damien Chazelle’s go-to lensman Linus Sandgren (La La Land) demonstrates outstanding framing and blocking variations spread across locations and interiors that range from decadent to dour (crafted by immediately award-worthy production design work by Conclave Oscar nominee Suzie Davies and her army of artists). His lighted use of arches, windows, doorways, and textured ground and floor patterns in foregrounds and backgrounds echoes an almost Fordian level of intentional control. Shot amid the foggy moors and rocky crags of Yorkshire Dales National Park, the rugged environments and unforgiving elements add texture to the lusty affairs. Even if the sheer wind and piercing rain are supposed to be icy and miserable, the temperature of the transgressions on screen makes it feel like an onslaught of pure, warm steam instead.
Those who know the much-lauded 1847 novel are well aware that for everything rapturous in “Wuthering Heights,” ruinous results are fated to follow. Knowing full well that adapting the entirety of Brontë’s classic would be nearly impossible, Emerald Fennell zeroed in on the first-generation romance, cementing its “loosely based” status. Brontë purists may lament the shrunken cast, trimmed timeline, the jettisoned flashback framing device, and the complete diminishment of the ghostly supernatural elements, but the passionate nucleus and alluring aura here are still exceptionally strong and superior, in many ways, to previous film adaptations. While it may be blackly moody and garish for pruder crowds, this “Wuthering Heights” is precisely the big-screen escapade ornately fashioned to fluster the hot-and-bothered in all the best ways.
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