‘Wuthering Heights’ is the lovechild of short attention spans

Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as Cathy | Warner Bros. Studio

“Wuthering Heights” stands for nothing more than Emerald Fennell’s fantasies of love that can outlast the beholders. To show this, she gives audiences a love that miscommunicates a love that hurts, defiles yet always forgives because to her, love at its best is a companion of hate. 

Fennell’s script relies only loosely on its source material, reining names and places true, but lacking in the qualities that create the devastations of Bronte’s novel. Nearing its 100 year anniversary, this classically beloved story has had space to breathe in old age, to reinvent itself to appeal to a modern audience.

Fennell leaps at this, stretches the concept as far as she can, tying a noose around the necks of the characters’ with the whip she used to flagellate themes to her own narrative.

Moody and full of yearn that is never quite quenched is the “Twilight” angst that the 2020s have been lacking. Bella and Edward bond over their love of Bronte’s novel, their love then inspiring pop culture’s first, uncensored taste of BDSM in the “Fifty Shades of Grey” novels and subsequent movies. 

Now Fennell has found a way to bring borderline abusive relationships that mask under love that cannot be sedated back into the mainstream.

Jacob Elordi, the star of Fennell’s preceding film “Saltburn,” demands attention in every scene in his iteration of Heathcliff. Alongside Margot Robbie, playing Cathy, Elordi stands over a foot taller. This difference in height is to be goggled at, or else inspire fear that accompanies his rage.

Cathy is never afraid of him. Her own will for vengeance and addiction to cruelty guides her to the iconic line proclaiming that their souls are made of the same. What their souls are made of is whatever goo or slop close-up Fennell lingers on at the start of many scenes.

A snail sliding across the window or a finger pushing into the mouth of a fish enclosed in a jell-o like substance, last in long shots that are equally intimate and intimidating. 

Some depict sexual tension–hands kneading bread as if its skin, beads of sweat on both the leads’ backs, fingers dipping into broken egg yolks– that give the atmosphere a certain pulse, a certain relation of icky and sexy. 

These extreme close-ups juxtapose with the windy moors where Cathy and Heathcliff find themselves many times throughout the story. Places on cliffs and open fields give the characters a sort of freedom, from the pressures of society and themselves, to be who they love each other for. 

Jacqueline Durran’s costumes let Cathy wear her heart on her sleeve, literally. Cathy dons dresses covered in bright reds, materials of mesh and iridescent plastic and patterns mimicking contemporary pieces of Temu and Shein.

Costume design in period pieces are highly criticized if not done with precision or timely accuracy. Durran, with previous works in “Pride & Prejudice” (2005) and “Little Woman” (2018), is no stranger to dressing actors in pieces that are relevant from the story’s time.

She recently worked on “Barbie”(2023), also a film with Margot Robbie as lead. In both aesthetics, period pieces and contemporary fashion, Durran does her research. Now she has combined the two into the wardrobe for Fennell’s modernization.  

This gives more shock to visuals as the clothing is clearly out of place for the times. Cathy is like the first social media influencer. She is a walking, contemporary advertisement for clothing that will be out of style by the time the order goes through.

Just as the narrative needs to be taken with a grain of salt, the costuming also does not try to be any pre-existing, period accurate storytelling. It seems Fennell, with assistance of Durran, has tried to mimic only the moody, greedy vibe of the story and not the era in which it lives.

Charli XCX has her own role in taking viewers out of the 1700s. The singer, songwriter and party girl stars in her film and mockumentary, “The Moment,” also released this year, and made original songs for “Wuthering Heights.”

Quick cuts from scenes, like Cathy’s montage of wealthy life after her marriage, coupled with XCX’s music make sequences feel like music videos. 

This film does not feel like a movie. The look of this film is one made for, made by and written about people indulged in TikTok and fast fashion clothing that is made to be thrown out. 

Fennell’s intention as a director, including her work with the controversial “Saltburn,” is to be grotesque and shocking. It’s almost as if she tells the audience: “It’s time to be grossed out!”

And still she plays things safe. No sex scene lasts more than a few seconds, quick cuts making it impossible for the uncomfortable to breath. She relies on those close-ups that mainly make viewers question what they are looking at. 

A room with walls the color of Cathy’s face– veins, freckles and moles included– signal to the audience that her husband, the decorator, is weirdly obsessed. Yet he lacks weirdness and perversity. 

This is not a cry for more. In fact, without the grotesque, the film could live on with the same energy. Rather, why did Fennell not try to do more? 

She knows how to set a tone, but fails to live it out in its entirety. 

The film opens on a black screen with the sound of squeaking wood. Then a man groans. Together, the insinuation is obvious. Instead of what the dirty minded audience naturally expects, the scene opens on a man being hanged.

For the rest of the movie, the audience is prepared to expect ruthlessness in place of sex. Violence in place of love. 

Heathcliff is the brute Cathy tells him he is. He is vindictive, he is sadistic. He is also so full of blinded yearning that viewers do not know whether to pity him or shame him for his spinelessness. 

Cathy is one and the same. They are soulmates, maybe. 

Fennell takes undying love, that Bronte signifies in the ghost of Cathy speaking to Heathcliff, and shows how this love exists under modern terms.

Haunting is the message of a dark romance that says violence over anything for a loved one is still love. 

An audience might be disturbed, but an audience will not be changed. The only progress these characters make is their methods of hurting each other and others to get what they want. No other character is as relevant as they are, for the other people in the story are merely aids to the whims of the lovebirds. 

“Wuthering Heights” is for a generation used to short-term entertainments, used to quick cuts and underbaked messages. Fennell not only encourages violent romance. Worst of all, she encourages facades. She encourages the disposable.

Comments

comments