'If Taylor Swift Were R-Rated': Emerald Fennel’s “Wuthering Heights”

I hate Wuthering Heights. I read it twice in English class, and disliked in more the second time than the first. I hate the contrived narrative with it’s three identically named characters. I hate the simpering fools down at Thrushcross Grange. I hate the mention of the ghost that tricks us into thinking this will be supernatural story. And I especially hate the Romantic-with-a-capital-R moment where Heathcliff so happens to be walking by at the exact moment his mortal enemy’s baby plummets from on high, instinctively catches it, and spends the next hundred pages loathing himself for it. It has its moments—Catherine’s famous speech, her ghost, and the final scenes of Heathcliff insensate, doomed to wander the moors—but the rest is a bloated, hysterical, melodramatic novel.

I don’t think I hate “Wuthering Heights” quite as much. If the parentheses tell you anything about Emerald Fennel’s new film, it’s that this is a Wuthering Heights only in name. It keeps the broad strokes—and I mean very broad—and thrusts the rest of the story into a sexed-up CGI fantasy-scape. It is entertaining in a very different way than Wuthering Heights is entertaining: if the book is about two horrible people who constantly fail to communicate, “Wuthering Heights” is about two horrible people who fail to communicate, then talk to each other about it, have sex a few times, then fall out again.

The entire story is a warped and condensed narrative of the first and most famous part of the novel, from Catherine and Heathcliff’s first meeting, through her disastrous marriage, and up to her eventual death. Fennel totally removes the primary antagonist of the novel, Catherine’s malicious brother Hindley, in favour of casting Catherine’s father and maid Nellie as the villains de jour. The story still works—it even plays on literary critics’ questions of Nellie’s reliability—even if the addition of Catherine naming Heathcliff after her dead brother seems to only serve to up the ante of sibling-adjacent erotica.

The characters inhabit a world I can only describe as what a Taylor Swift music video would look like if it were R-rated. The two houses—wild Wuthering Heights and refined Thrushcross Grange—are baffling fantastical creations that would be at home in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. Wuthering Heights is surrounded by rock pillars stretching to fantastic heights, while Thrushcross Grange is a fever dream of skin-toned wallpaper (compete with veins and freckles), gelatinous carpets, monochrome fairy lights, and costumes that wouldn’t look out of place at the Met Gala—Margot Robbie’s necklines only plunge lower throughout the film. It’s a satirical dreamscape filled with women who create pastel-coloured picture books filled with floral genetalia to represent their repressed, naïve sexual urges (though don’t worry—Isabella Linton will get the fetishist sex scene of her dreams before the credits role). Yet its theatricality is so contrived it never quite manages to hit its mark—it’s amusing once, then mildly disturbing, and then the fleshy wallpaper simply feels a bit odd. I wasn’t amused, only annoyed—but then, everything about Wuthering Heights annoys me, so this was actually very book-accurate.

The only location that feels true to life is the moors—majestic, vast, and utterly real, shot on location instead of brought to life by an overworked FX artist. It’s these scenes on the moors when “Wuthering Heights” is at its best: when the characters are furious, despairing, lovelorn, or just stuffing their fingers into each other’s mouths to rid themselves of sexual tension. In the great outdoors, in the mist and the rain and even the weak Yorkshire sun, Fennel actually manages to create an adaptation that feels like Wuthering Heights.

But what about that sex? For a film with so many sex scenes, “Wuthering Heights” is one of the least sexual films I have ever seen. Emerald Fennel tries very hard—we get to see Catherine’s sexual awakening occur via a moment of voyeuristic bondage, watch Jacob Elodri bite many, many fingers, and witness endless slow motion clips of fingers moving through viscous liquids. It is shocking one, to the point of hilarity, and then seizes to be so again. Once we enter the CGI dreamland, the sex fails to shock because we are not in the real world. Instead, we’re privy to someone else’s wet dream—uncomfortable, then funny, then unfortunately a little boring. We should really all know less about each other—secrecy is sexier.

“Wuthering Heights” is at its best when it stops trying to be shocking, and just tries to be an interesting film. It leans heavily on the strengths of its actors, both adults and children. Owen Cooper of Adolescence fame reprises his role as an angry young man who only has one strong emotional connection in his life (Young Heathcliff). Young Catherine is a bright, rowdy, enigmatic figure played by Charlotte Mellington. But the stars of the show are Margot Robbie, who mopes and yells and masturbates and mopes some more into an untimely Victorian death (leeches and all), and Emerald Fennel favourite Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. He also mopes, but erotically. In my screening, the audience cheered when he took his wet linen shirt off. Heathcliff’s other activities include chopping wood (sexily), riding a horse (sexily), standing in the rain (sexily), and keeping his wife on a chain (possibly meant to be sexy). Other standouts include Hong Chau as the now-villainous Nelly, with whom we momentarily sympathize before being disgusted by, and Alison Oliver as Isabella, with whom we also momentarily sympathize before being disgusted by. These two get to do actual acting more often than Robbie and Elordi—Chau is subtle and Oliver satirical in a manner that becomes less inane as her character matures. By matures, I mean discovers sexual bondage.

When the actors get to work together, they are very affecting—Catherine tearfully confessing to Nelly and Heathcliff in his rages are the highlights of the book, and they are neatly translated to the screen. The addition of extra communication between Catherine and Heathcliff also means we get to watch Robbie and Elordi interact far more than in the source material, letting them shine to the degree that the viewer is able to root for Catherine and Heathcliff (made even easier now Nelly’s antagonism is emphasised). For all that “Wuthering Heights” wants to shock and disgust, it also wants to be a romance film—and in the moments that it isn’t reminding us of Catherine and Heathcliff’s awfulness, it succeeds.

The best scene of “Wuthering Heights” is the montage at the end: first, Heathcliff envelops Catherine in his arms in her sickbed as he confesses his love (again). We cut to Heathcliff racing his horse over the vast expanse of the misty moors, and we realize that he hasn’t reached her, that he never will—and as this dawns on us, we flashback to Heathcliff and Catherine as children, crying and playing and pledging to love each other forever. It’s a great ending because it doesn’t try to shock or subvert or scare (when Heathcliff finally arrives at Thrushcross Grange to find Cathy dead, it’s even less suggestive than in the book): instead, it just relies on the characters, their emotions, and the rawness of their grief and their love. It’s moving, and it’s because it’s so moving that “Wuthering Heights” is a good film. It can be fun and playful and even salacious, but it isn’t good because of those things. It’s good because it captures the relationship between two torn, complicated, horrible people—and that it ends on this scene shows that it knows it.