“What I wanted to make was something that distilled the feeling that I had when I was 14 while I read it,” says filmmaker Emerald Fennell in a featurette for “Wuthering Heights.” Fennell directed, produced and wrote the screenplay for her film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel. “Every camera movement, every single prop has an emotional reason for existing. It is undeniable.”
Reviews are out and critics have praised Fennell’s adaptation. Vogue US headlined their review by describing the film as an “indulgent delight,” with the author saying that the film “feels seared into my brain – the eye-popping excess, the unbridled, tongue-in-cheek nastiness, the sheer scale and imagination of it all. See it on the biggest screen possible with as many friends as possible, and get ready to argue for hours afterward.”
Rolling Stone said that Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” “may be the horniest literary interpretation ever made,” adding that “Sight and sound are all extra-ribbed for your you-know-what, but the movie is sensual in a way that aims to engage not just eyes and ears, but all of the senses at once.”
Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s movie adaptation of “Wuthering Heights”
Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
In their review, NME praised Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, who play Cathy and Heathcliff, respectively. “Robbie is unafraid of playing up Cathy’s brattiness and selfishness, while Elordi – with his spot-on regional accent – has a combustible magnetism that bristles throughout the film,” they wrote. “His temper and her jealousy are too hot, too greedy, as Kate Bush might say, and the same applies to the spicy sex scenes that are much edgier than your standard Victorian lit adaptation.”
Empire Magazine described the film as “satisfyingly sumptuous” and said that “Wuthering Heights” shows “Fennell’s filmmaking at its strongest. She summons gothic romanticism against the rough and wind-swept Northern terrain, and viscerally portrays the raw young love forged between the pair, before status and duty intervene. It’s refreshing to watch her work in a barren, near-wilderness environment, a desolate canvas in which Elordi and Robbie are given free rein to play.”
Also starring Alison Oliver, Shazad Latif and Hong Chau, “Wuthering Heights” is now showing in cinemas, in time for Valentine’s Day weekend.
Official synopsis:
From Warner Bros. Pictures and Academy Award- and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Emerald Fennell comes “WUTHERING HEIGHTS,” starring Academy Award and BAFTA nominee Margot Robbie opposite BAFTA nominee Jacob Elordi.
A bold and original imagining of one of the greatest love stories of all time, Emerald Fennell’s “WUTHERING HEIGHTS” stars Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, whose forbidden passion for one another turns from romantic to intoxicating in an epic tale of lust, love and madness.
