“Wuthering Heights” (dir. Emerald Fennell)

By: Adam Freed 

There is no shame in an unfaithful adaptation for the screen if the result is a successful movie.  In fact, a film that explores interesting new directions or unearths a contemporary thematic interpretation unavailable at the time of a novel’s release can be quite exciting to experience.  In this sense, cinematic adaption offers a form of generationally connective tissue, making what once appeared threadbare, take on new meaning to a bright eyed generation.  Regretfully, the generous nature of this perspective cannot be applied to Emerald Fennell’s interpretation of Emily Brontë‘s Victorian era masterpiece Wuthering Heights.  

Set dramatically on the craggy expanse of England’s Yorkshire moors, “Wuthering Heights” tells the generational story of Catherine Earnshaw and her childhood companion Heathcliff.  Both central characters are haunted by the unpredictability of Catherine’s father, a fact that initially draws the two together, and eventually drives them apart.  The accordion nature of their will-they-won’t-they relationship sets up the primary tension in Fennell’s loose adaptation.   The casting of the film’s main characters couldn’t receive higher marks by forefronting two of the world‘s most beautiful, and marketable, stars in Margot Robbie (Barbie, Babylon) and Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein, Saltburn).  Yet, there looms a dark shadow across Fennell’s interpretation of the Emily Brontë Gothic story, a gloom created mostly by the director herself.  Rather than enlivening her vision with the same layers of narrative depth and character complexity that make the Wuthering Heights novel a canonical fan favorite, Fennell provides a painfully flat melodramatic dime store romance in place of what could have become a sweeping story on a grand scale.

It should be acknowledged that the Saltburn (2023) crowd will likely feel seen by the tragically out of place stylistic period choices that “Wuthering Heights” makes.  There are so many visually rich and historically specific elements that exist within Brontë’s Victorian Era, that it makes the grandiose decisions regarding costume and decor of Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” much more confounding.  Ultimately, the latest adaptation of the canonical novel works as little more than a reminder of the unending promise Emerald Fennell showed in the wake of her Oscar winning Promising Young Woman (2020) and the subsequent challenges related to early success in Hollywood.

Loose adaptation is not a cardinal sin when it comes to making movies.  After all, even The Wizard of Oz (1939) took some creative liberties with Frank Baum’s legendary tale and it did nothing to dampen enthusiasm for the project. But Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” does little more than take the delicate layers of a three dimensional story and compress them into a 2D rendering that feels as if it has neither patience or purpose in service of its source material.  No matter how alluring its stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi may be, there simply is not enough of either of them to patch the considerable number of holes in Fennell’s rickety film.

Target Score 4.5/10 - Despite the strength of its generationally relevant source material and two of Hollywood’s most marketable names atop its marquee, Emerald Fennel’s tragically loose adaptation of Wuthering Heights shows a lack of reverence for the Victorian era in which it was intended to reside.