For the past year and a half, the world has been breathlessly discussing and debating Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights—and now, following an endless stream of premieres, interviews, and method dressing, the film will finally be in theaters. After all that, how could it possibly live up to the deafening hype? The delightful thing, though, is that it does—whatever you make of this big, bold, gaudy, controversial melodrama, it is, at least, every bit as maddeningly ambitious and divisive as the promotional campaign that’s preceded it.
It opens with rapid breathing that sounds like masturbation but is actually asphyxiation—a young Cathy Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington) and her only slightly older housekeeper, Nelly (Vy Nguyen), are at a public hanging, watching a man gasping for air. There are bodily fluids, jeering crowds, and demonic Punch and Judy puppets applauding through the chaos, giving the scene the air of a demented fairy tale. This was a sequence that shocked many viewers in the film’s earliest test screenings, and it serves as the perfect litmus test for what you’ll make of everything that follows—love it, as I did, and you’ll find much to enjoy in the next two or so hours; loathe it, as many seemed to in the screening I attended (there were a handful of walkouts), and it may prove to be a difficult sit.
As should be apparent from this opening, fans of Emily Brontë’s beloved novel would be wise to leave their expectations at the door—this wild take on the classic is, to put it generously, a very loose adaptation of its source material. Its structure is altered, key characters are significantly changed or missing entirely, and countless liberties are taken with the central relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. (Fennell has been open about such changes, describing the film as being based on her memories of reading the book as a teen, rather than strictly faithful.) But, if you can look past that, it’s quite the ride.
After this head-spinning sequence, Cathy and Nelly skip home past a river of blood to Wuthering Heights, their ominous, coal-stained, otherworldly abode, and soon meet Heathcliff (Adolescence’s Owen Cooper), a young boy whom Cathy’s frequently drunken and erratic father (Martin Clunes) has brought home. Heathcliff drives a wedge between the two girls, with Cathy infatuated with her new playmate. They grow up almost as siblings and, before you know it, morph into Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.