REVIEW. "WUTHERING HEIGHTS." Emerald Fennell's Teenage Fever Dream Makes For One Fine Bad Romance.

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights."

I want your love and all your lover's revenge

You and me could write a bad romance.

-Lady Gaga, "Bad Romance"

Let's face it. Catherine Earnshaw may have found an eternal symbiosis in her relationship with Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's only novel, Wuthering Heights (published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell), declaring, "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same," but their doomed tale is filled with revenge, emotional brutality, toxicity and obsession. Early reviews of the novel were mixed, as critics were confused by the "savagery and selfishness" of the characters: "a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors."

The lack of gentility commonly associated with novels of the day was apparent, yet "in spite of the disgusting coarsness of much of the dialogue, and the improbabilities of much of the plot, we are spellbound," wrote The Literary World. Clearly, Brontë's sweeping tragedy, set against the back-drop of the blustery Yorkshire moors, and influenced as much by Walter Scott as Lord Byron, was not for everyone.

The same can be said about the movies of writer/director Emerald Fennell. No one could ever accuse Fennell of being shy, subtle, polite, or genteel. Her style of filmmaking is not for everyone, and definitely not for the sexually skittish. Obsessed, for sure. Possessed, maybe. But nothing in her short filmography - three films to date, including Promising Young Woman (2021), for which she won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and Saltburn (2023) - shies away from boldly exploring the consequences of revenge, obsession, and unrequited passions.

Both PYW and Saltburn are genre-crossing black comedy thrillers that push boundaries depicting extreme, arguably unconventional, and excessive sexual and moral/criminal behavior. In each case, Fennell didn't just dip a toe over any boundaries of good taste. She has entered every film she's made at peak emotional levels which only get more intense as the stories unfold. And just when you think she's reached her limit, she goes to that place where dragons live.

I've been intrigued by Fennell's dark and twisted tales since first I streamed Promising Young Woman during the Covid lockdown. Fennell is, without doubt, a provocateuse, using sex as an outlet to explore inequities in the British class system in much the same way as Madonna used music (and music videos) to express herself about everything from unplanned pregnancies to racial injustice. Thirty years ago, the image of the Material Girl having sex on a candlelit altar with St. Martin de Porras in "Like a Prayer" wound up with the video initially getting pulled from rotation on MTV. Interracial sex in a church apparently crossed some standard of good taste.

Similarly, the now infamous bathtub scene in Saltburn, in which Oxford student (and budding psychopath) Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) secretly drinks the semen-laced bathwater left by his classmate, the weathy Felix Caton (Jacob Elordi), with whom Oliver is smitten, is both shocking (some argue disgusting), and deeply troubling to watch. And if that isn't enough, we later watch a grief-stricken Oliver masturbate on Felix's grave. It's not surprising then that early buzz about Fennell's much-anticipated interpretation of one of the most enduring literary love stories has critics's interest - and hackles - up. Early reviews have been predictably mixed, which seems appropriate given Fennell's cinematic imprimatur and her now well-documented vision for the latest iteration of love set admist England's ethereal moors.

Brontë purists have been fearing the worst: the total desecration of a beloved classic, while other, less ardant devotees, predicted more bodice-ripping kink. After an early screening, one critic bemoaned that Fennell didn't deliver on the "sicko Gothic fantasy" she promised. Though I haven't read every interview Fennell has given regarding the making of "Wuthering Heights", I have read and watched multiple conversations with Fennell about what she was hoping to accomplish with this film. I don't ever recall her promising a demented Tim Burtonesque version of Brontë's haunting tale, so I certainly wasn't expecting "Beetlejuice Visits Saltburn in Zombieland." I guess everyone has their own interpretation of what Fennell was attempting to do.

So c'mon. Admit it. You're curious, maybe even swooning. The hype is real, and the anticipation has been crescendoing for months. What better time than Valentine's Day weekend to re-introduce the world to one of literature's most tragic and enduring tales of passion, love and loss? Everyone - from critics to influencers to Brontë scholars - have heated up online debates of late, asking everything from whether Emily Brontë's sweeping tale is really "the greatest" love story of all time, or even if it's a love story at all.

If you haven't already read and felt the intense emotional impact of Emily Brontë's classic novel, you can't possibly have missed the massive marketing campaign that has preceded the Valentine's Day release of this "Wuthering Heights." Countless television interviews, podcasts and press, complete with fashion shows, Margot Robbie's in particular, that underscore the timelessness of the story's romance. If ever there was a love story ripe for Fennell's feverish interpretation, it's Brontë's dark tale of a powerful love forbidden by social class differences, defied by passion and, ultimately, destroyed by jealousy and revenge.

To date, there have been somewhere between fourteen and thirty TV and movie versions of the novel, ranging from the 1939 classic film with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon to Arashi Ga Oka, a 1988 adaptation that takes place in feudal Japan Already the topic of endless discussion and debate about everything from Fennell's casting choices (Margot Robbie's too old; Jacob Elordi too white), to changes in the novel's original plot, and other assorted variations of Brontë's haunting text, "Wuthering Heights" 2026 has ridden in on a wave of anticipation and controversy.

Fennell has repeatedly, enthusiastically, defended the choices she's made in all her movies, including this one, which explains why she did not simply adapt Wuthering Heights for the big screen. Instead, she has offered her interpretation of it: "The thing for me is that you can't adapt a book as dense and complicated as this...I can't say I'm making Wuthering Heights. It's not possible. What I can say is that I'm making a version of it."

Fennell's version is primarily based on how the book made her feel when she read it at age fourteen, and so it is consequently fused with the kinds of hormonally charged images, sounds and emotions an adolescent might be experiencing when first introduced to the idea of enduring, obsessive, forbidden love.

But Fennell is no longer a teenager, and so the movie is more of a curious fusion of an adult's remembrance of that excitable landscape: a teenage fever dream. It's as though Fennell's own memory of reading the novel is so profoundly embedded in her socio-sexual psyche that she needs to explore the depths of its importance to her own spirit. Kind of like Guillermo del Toro's fascination with Frankenstein, except here the monsters are internal and the sexuality presented as erotic kink. Think about all those puberty-driven fantasies of youth, and all the images, desires, and bodily fluids they elicited.

Much of Fennell's focus on the feelings that characterize primal sexuality drives the look and feel of the movie: everything from the wallpaper to external bricks breathe with moisture, with tears, with emotion. The meticulously designed sets evoke the bleak, dreary claustrophic doom at Wuthering Heights contrasted by the bright, sunny opulence of Thrushcross Grange, where Cathy lives after marrying the wealthy Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). Fennell frames every shot carefully, often using a maze of deeply set dooways to show loneliness and isolation. Her repeated use of the color red is a constant reminder of the underlying passion that fuels the narrative, using alternately vivid, muted, and varying shades of scarlet on the walls, in Cathy's dresses, and within nature. When a heartbroken Heathcliff abruptly leaves Wuthering Heights after overhearing Cathy declare that being with him would "degrade her," we see him ride off into a brilliantly burning sunset, sky ablaze with anger and sorrow.

But the use of the color red that struck me hardest was the juxtaposing of a scene early on, when young Heathcliff takes the blame for Cathy when the two spend too much time on the moors and miss Cathy's father's birthday party. It was Cathy's idea to linger on, but Heathcliff takes the fall for her, resulting in a merciless beating at the hands of Mr. Earnshaw. Later, as Cathy goes to Heathcliff's room to comfort him, she sees the spots of blood from the scars through his nightshirt. Years later, after Heathcliff has left Wuthering Heights and Cathy is unhappily preparing to marry Edgar, she insists that her wedding dress be corsetted tighter and tigher, leaving her back (and her white dress) tainted with scars similar to Heathcliff.

For the most part, these images are stunning, making the film a sumptuous visual feast, even if the substance is sometimes harder to find. Placed against Anthony Willis's luscious score, and punctuated by original songs from Charlie XCX, the movie evokes a kind of boundless expanse to what passion unfulfilled can do. Even the costumes transcend time and place: costume designer Jacqueline Durran (who also did Barbie), combines eighteenth century corsets with more modern, gauzy fabric and latex, adding to the movie's timeless feel. The movie poster (see above) is another kind of throwback to old Hollywood, reminiscent of other greater cinematic love stories like 1939's Gone With the Wind.

Like most TV/movie adaptations of Wuthering Heights, Fennell's film only covers the first half of the novel, focusing on the star-crossed relationship between privileged Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and rescued orphan Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) whom Cathy's father (a marvelous Martin Clunes) "adopts" as a kind of playmate for his only daughter. Young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) and Heathcliff (Owen Cooper, from Netflix TV's Adolescence), thus bond as children, a connection that is both playful and benign, one which grows increasingly sexual and problematic as they move into adulthood. In these early scenes between Cathy and Heathcliff, Fennell beautifully establishes the kind of forever attachment that will become a lynchpin to the narrative. Mellington and Cooper are raw and tender with each other, their faces open and receptive to the other's care, making their inevitable tragedy all the more heartbreaking in the film's final frame.

The class differences between them become their greatest obstacle and also their most powerful aphrodisiac. Never has the intoxication of forbidden love been depicted with such care, detail, and life. The movie literally exhales passion in every frame, pulling the audience deeper and deeper into Cathy and Heathcliff's passionate core. Though Fennell has shocked audiences in the past by depicting some unsavory sexual encounters, she shows considerable restraint here.

There is no nudity to speak of, save a shirtless Elordi, and more suggestion than exposition of their lovemaking. Heathcliff and Cathy never even kiss in the novel, so creating a space for the two childhood companions to consummate their passion is, arguably, the most controversial deviation from the book. By filling in the what the novel never addresses, Fennell satisfies her own unfulfilled adolscent curiosity. In this way, she creates the feeling of being swept away, using minimalist dialogue, longing glances, and the strong chemistry between her two co-stars to engage the audience. She sacrifices some character development and behaviorial motives in the process, though I suspect she was envisioning something bigger, more emotionally visceral, more quintessentially timeless. I couldn't help but remember my own teenage years, the hours spent in my bedroom reading while listening to the latest pop songs, synocopating the desperate urgency of "I Think I Love You" with the plaintiff winds of Brontë's windswept meadows.

The fact that neither Cathy nor Heathcliff is particularly redeemable - she is highly narcissistic; he becomes ruthless, capable of inflicting considerable destruction to all who stand in the way of what he wants - seems irrelevant in terms of whether this is a "love" story. A love story doesn't require the characters be honorable, but it does need to resonate at some level with its audience. Here, despite Cathy and Heathcliff's personal flaws, what remains tragic is how the external social conventions and expectations of the day influence the lovers's behavior.

In particular, Cathy is consumed by social class awareness. Her decision to marry the wealthy Edgar is more about personal edification than love, and Robbie's unflinching, headstrong performance serves her Cathy well. Elordi's Heathcliff is more nuanced and complex: even after Cathy rebukes him, Heathcliff returns five years later, an embittered but weathy gentleman who still carries young Heathcliff's eternal love for Cathy on his sleeve. Even as Heathcliff becomes increasingly brutal - his marriage to Edgar's sister Isabella (Alison Oiver) is a horrifying example of how cruel he has become - we still catch glimpses of vulnerability. Elordi captures Heathcliff's sadness and heartbreak in subtle ways - an errant glance, a quiet gesture.

Robbie and Elordi are nonethless appealing, and Fennell effectively uses their physical appeal and undeniable chemistry on screen to bring her sweeping romance to a richly luxuriant level. Criticisms about casting the blonde, 35-year-old Robbie as the dark-haired teenager Cathy didn't detract from the story, especially given eighteenth century standards of age and beauty. As for Heathcliff, he is described in the novel, as "dark-skinned, like a gypsy," suggesting to some scholars that he might be of Spanish, southern European or Basque descent. Though some critics have been very vocal about not selecting an actor of color, the Australian Elordi is of Basque descent, so perhaps some of the naysayers will back off.

I read Wuthering Heights at about the same as as Fennell, along with several other classics, and I've often thought about how my favorite novels have affected my perception of the world, of relationships. For me, those formative years, between the ages of 12 and 18, opened a window of possibility about the world outside my own. After Wuthering Heights, I'm fondest of Great Expectations, Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby. But Heathcliff has always haunted me, especially after I saw the 1970 movie version with a very brooding Timothy Dalton. And, like any academic worth my degree, I can pick apart various interpretations of movies with precise detail and sometimes vicious dissection. Don't get me started on Alfonso Cuarón's 1998 modernization of Great Expectations with Ethan Hawke and Gwenyth Paltrow.

Before seeing this latest version of Wuthering Heights, I did wonder, given the ghosty and macabre elements in Wuthering Heights and Fennell's penchant for the creepy, how Heathcliff digging up Cathy's grave would be handled since it does happen in the book. After Cathy's death, a grief-stricken Heathcliff digs up her body and makes a hole in her coffin so that, when he dies, their ashes can mingle with the dirt. Seemed like the perfect opportunity for Fennell to go even farther than she did with the gravesite masturbation scene in Saltburn. But Fennell goes in a different direction, bookending her story with a flashback to young Cathy and Heathcliff declaring their forever committment to always stay together, and then an older, distraught Heathcliff tearfully pleading with the recently departed Cathy to haunt him for the rest of his days.

I didn't go to see Emerald Fennell's version of Wuthering Heights to question her casting choices, nitpick the details/characters she omitted or altered, or offer suggestions of how I would have made this latest variation on Brontë's classic better. I went hoping to be captivated and swept away with the same kind of intense passion that drives the story. And, about an 75 minutes in, as the recently returned Heathcliff looks up at Cathy and says, "I have not broken your heart — you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine!" Echoes of Lord Byron and Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein: "The heart will break and yet brokenly live on." In that moment, I felt that same rush of heartbreak, a sense memory from all those years ago when first I encountered Brontë's poetic pages.

Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" might not move you in the same way (I'm guessing there will be memes of some of the movie's excess), but it definitely reminded me why I love cinema, why I love sitting in the dark waiting to be transported to another time and place, why I will always love a good/bad romance, and how my own life experiences continue to teach me more about movies...and myself. I must see it again.

Happy Valentine's Day.

*******

"Wuthering Heights" is currently playing in theaters and should be seen on the big screen, if you can. It is rated "R" for sexual content and one particularly grisly scene involving a public hanging.