Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell
Like almost every other filmmaker who has adapted Emily Brontë's novel, writer/director Emerald Fennell, that grand dame of dingbat cinema, has chopped the book in half. Gone is the Gothic horror of the second half, as Fennell reduces Brontë's tale to an easily digestible romance. Well, in theory at least, as this movie will prove hard to digest for many, especially fans of classic literature. Fennell has added quotation marks to her title to let us know we shouldn't expect a straight translation, and she has stated in interviews that her film is based less on the novel and more on her memory of first reading it as an impressionable 14-year-old. If the director is to be believed, Jacob Elordi was cast in the role of Heathcliff for his resemblance to the illustration on the cover of the book read by the teenage Fennell.
As someone whose favourite Shakespeare "adaptation" is Godard's King Lear, I couldn't care less about fealty to literary sources. If you want the book, go read the book. But as open-minded as I was about Fennell's bodice-ripper, it didn't take long for me to start questioning the point of this neutered version of a complicated classic.
Fennell opens "Wuthering Heights" in promisingly provocative fashion. Over a black screen we hear what sounds like copulation, but what we mistook for a creaky bed and breathy moans of ecstasy are revealed as the sound of a man hanging from the gallows in a public square. Among the delighted crowd of onlookers is a young Cathy Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington), who seems particularly thrilled to witness this gruesome display. Mellington has a devious look in her eye that tees up Cathy as a fascinating and complex figure, only for a miscast Margot Robbie to later send the character into the bunker with the latest in a growing line of terrible performances.
Robbie is miscast not only because she's only convincing when she's portraying a plastic doll, but because she's a 35-year-old playing a teenager. Despite casting a 35-year-old Robbie and 28-year-old Elordi, Fennell has written Cathy and Heathcliff as though they're still naive adolescents to such a degree that Mellington and Owen Cooper as young Heathcliff seem more mature than their older selves. Watching Robbie prance around like an overgrown moppet is simply bizarre and often unsettling. Cathy is put through the emotional wringer here, but Robbie only strikes one note, her performance that of an exasperated balloon lady performing at an unruly kids' party.
Much has been made of the casting of the unambiguously white Elordi as a racially ambiguous character whose ethnicity has been fuelling debate for decades. But the casting of Elordi isn't half as problematic as placing an Asian actor, Shazad Latif, in the role of Heathcliff's cucked love rival Edgar Linton. When Heathcliff buggers off, Cathy marries Linton, but dreams of Heathcliff as her husband pumps away at her every night. Fennell's tone deaf colourblind casting has the effect of making this play like a white supremacist's sexual fantasy. The casting of Hong Chau, who is a full decade older than Robbie, as Cathy's handmaiden and former childhood companion Nelly, will have you wondering if the mist of the moors has some strange effect on the aging of the population of 19th century Yorkshire. Only Alison Oliver as Isabella, who becomes Heathcliff's abused wife, feels like she's in the correct role, and you can't help but surmise the Irish actress would have made a far more convincing Cathy. But then Robbie is so awful here that Tommy Wiseau would have made a better stab at Cathy.
On a purely technical level, there are impressive sights and sounds to take in here. The cinematography, costume and production design are the very definition of sumptuous, but they often feel at odds with the film. Many images appear designed to decorate a teenage girl's 2012 Tumblr page rather than aiding the story. Fennell's film is less a movie and more a string of gifs. Anthony Willis provides a moody score that is a world away from the film's otherwise campy tone. It's as if Willis has scored Brontë's novel rather than Fennell's movie. When a Charli XCX song appears it completely takes us out of the Gothic setting, as though the movie has taken a commercial break to sell us perfume.
The main problem with "Wuthering Heights" is that it's neither fish nor fowl. The opening scene suggests we're in for an examination of the line between sex and violence, but when Cathy and Heathcliff start bonking it's surprisingly chaste. Fennell wants to provoke, but she also wants her film to be palatable for an audience of teenage Elordi fans. Heathcliff is a baffling figure in her version, only really turning into the cad from the novel when he marries Isabella and forces her to bark like a dog (Fennell has also turned Heathcliff and Isabella's abusive relationship into one based on mutual consent). For the most part he's a lumbering cliché of a "m'lady" gentleman. The film's press tour has seen Robbie speak about how she practically fell in love with Elordi during the shoot, but none of that chemistry makes it to the screen. Robbie and Elordi might be the two least sexy beautiful people in Hollywood. Their lovemaking here resembles a young girl bashing her Ken and Barbie dolls together. I'm not sure they even possess hip joints. I fear that white people will never get laid again thanks to this movie.
"Wuthering Heights" is in UK/ROI cinemas from February 13th.
