Wuthering Heights review

WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 

A BEAUTIFUL BUT MESSY ROMANCE! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights

 

            Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street, DC Extended Universe, Barbie) and Jacob Elordi (The Kissing Booth trilogy, Priscilla, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein) join forces to bring Emily Brontë’s classic romance novel to the screen in Wuthering Heights, the new film from director Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn) in her third directing effort. I was interested in seeing this when I first saw the trailer though I had never read the book nor seen any previous adaptation of it. 

            No, I just thought the film looked incredible from a production design and cinematography standpoint and I really like the two leads, Robbie and Elordi. I didn’t like A Big Bold Beautiful Journey very much last year, but I thought Robbie was great and had charming chemistry with Colin Farrell, she delivers the goods even when the movie itself doesn’t so mad props to her. 

            Emerald Fennell I think is an interesting and very ambitious filmmaker, I enjoyed her first film, Promising Young Woman quite a bit and while I didn’t love her follow-up movie, Saltburn, I admired her going all-out and crazy with it especially in the last third. I didn’t really have any expectations with her version of Wuthering Heights and…oh boy, this was certainly a movie. 

            I don’t think this film is terrible or anything and I’ll gladly take this over the shitty Fifty Shades of Grey movies in terms of a Valentine’s Day date movie, but despite a lot of amazing aspects of it, I found it to be a mess with the narrative and pacing. Also, I heard that if you’re a huge fan of the book, you may not like how Fennell handles the source material. 

            The film is set in 18^th century England and follows Cathy Earnshaw (Robbie) and Heathcliff (Elordi) who have been pretty much inseparable since childhood after the latter was taken in by Cathy’s father. But when Cathy marries a wealthy suitor known as Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif-Spooks, Penny Dreadful, Star Trek: Discovery), Heathcliff disappears from the village only to return sometime later causing massive tension and eventual tragedy between Cathy, Mr. Linton, and Heathcliff. 

            The film also stars Hong Chau (Downsizing, The Menu, The Whale) as Nelly Dean, Alison Oliver (Conversations of Friends, Saltburn, Christy) as Edgar’s ward Isabella Linton, Martin Clunes (Men Behaving Badly, Shakespeare in Love, Doc Martin) as Cathy’s father Mr. Earnshaw, and Ewan Mitchell (The Last Kingdom, House of the Dragon, Saltburn) as Joseph. 

            Overall, Wuthering Heights as with Fennell’s other projects is certainly ambitious and an absolutely beautiful film to look at on the big screen, but despite that and Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi giving very strong performances, this romantic-drama is all over the place and left me feeling rather empty by the end. 

            As mentioned before, I never read the book, but from what I heard is Emerald Fennell took the basic premise of Wuthering Heights and crafted a kinky, softcore porn fan fiction version of it that literally starts off with a man with an erection being hanged. Well, to Fennell’s credit, I was never bored during this movie because of how chaotic and weird it gets, but it probably does a huge disservice to the book as a first impression.

            I admire Fennell for having such a wild vision and essentially going for broke with this adaptation, but I feel like she would have been a lot more comfortable and have more creative freedom with a Wuthering Heights-inspired film instead of an actual adaptation with marketing that calls it “The Greatest Love Story of All Time”. I’m sure the book is significantly better as a love story, but if we’re going by this movie, this is NOT “The Greatest Love Story of All Time” because Robbie and Elordi even though they give good performances as Cathy and Heathcliff, they’re terrible fucking people in this! 

            Elordi’s Heathcliff is an obsessive sadist who goes to extreme lengths to get what he wants and one scene in particular involving a relationship between him and Cathy’s half-sister Isabella is one of the most twisted, sexual tension-filled scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie that makes the Fifty Shades a Grey movie look…even more softcore than it actually is. It’s honestly pretty hard to root for him and to get back together with Robbie’s Cathy after that. 

            Margot Robbie as Cathy once again is very well-acted by her, but her character is a lying, cheating bitch who constantly rejects every opportunity she gets to do the right thing. There were times where I thought she would walk a similar path as Barry Keoghan’s Oliver Quick from Saltburn and go on a killing spree, she is so fucking cruel and cold to the people around her in this film though Robbie seems to be enjoying going over-the-top. 

            However, despite my complicated reactions towards the movie itself, Wuthering Heights is freaking gorgeous and is worth seeing on the big screen on the cinematography and production design alone. The cinematographer is Linus Sandgren who also worked with Fennell on Saltburn and worked on several other films like American Hustle and La La Land, Sandgren covers Wuthering Heights itself in bleak darkness and drowns the village in fog while making Cathy’s other home, Mr. Linton’s castle very vibrant with color, it often reminded me of the kind of stuff Tim Burton would do. 

            The landscape shots are breathtaking and the set and costume designs are superb, I was in constant awe with the look of the film and between this and the animated film, GOAT, this Valentine’s Day weekend is chocked full of visual dazzle, style, and slickness. It easily deserves Oscar nominations next year for Best Cinematography, Production Design, and Costume Design because it is an absolute marvel to look at even if the film itself is just mid. 

            Wuthering Heights continues Emerald Fennell’s ambitious streak for better and for worse, it’s a gorgeous film in terms of the cinematography and production design and Robbie and Elordi are clearly giving their all. But Fennell’s handling of the source material and downright bizarre choices made really hamper its potential whether as a legit adaptation of the book or an Emerald Fennell erotic romantic-drama that’s inspired by Wuthering Heights, watch it if you know what you’re getting into.