When Emily Bronte died of tuberculosis in 1848, she probably didn’t imagine that her one and only novel would become a trending topic on TikTok 178 years later.
In fact, she probably would’ve cast you out onto the moors for trying to explain what an algorithm is (and she would’ve been right to do so).
But thanks to Emerald Fennell’s controversial new film adaptation, Wuthering Heights is once again a hot topic of discussion.
And just as they were when the book was first published, critics are sharply divided over a story that pushes the limits and defies expectations.
Interestingly, Fennell tossed out much of the source material and (rather loosely) adapted only the first half of the book.
She also cast 35-year-old Margot Robbie to play (spoiled alert!) a character who dies at the age of 18, and Jacob Elordi to play a character whose described as “dusky” and “dark-skinned” in the book.
But perhaps most controversial of all, Fennell took a tale about unfulfilled longing and filled it with lots of fully clothed sexual encounters between the two leads.
The result is a film that has some critics praising its sumptuous visuals, and others wondering why the director chose to adapt a beloved classic just to alter so much of what made it a classic.
Is this a new entry in the canon of horny period pieces or a bait-and-switch testament to the severity of the 21st century’s literacy crisis?
We’ll suppose you’ll have to see the film and judge for yourself. But in the meantime, here’s what the critics have to say (via The Hollywood Reporter):
Clarisse Loughrey, The Independent: “With its title stylised in quotation marks, and a director’s statement that it’s intended to capture her experience of reading the book aged 14, it uses the guise of interpretation to gut one of the most impassioned, emotionally violent novels ever written, and then toss its flayed skin over whatever romance tropes seem most marketable. Adaptation or not, it’s an astonishingly hollow work.”
Alison Willmore, Vulture: “Wuthering Heights is an incredibly moist movie, and that’s without even taking into account how often the characters get caught in or choose to stride out into the rain (all the better to make their outfits cling).
Kevin Maher, The U.K. Times: “Who knew Isabella Linton was the best character in Wuthering Heights? She is in this vapid Brontë adaptation, anyway, a film that is enlivened briefly whenever she appears on screen, wickedly played by Alison Oliver.”
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: “Emerald Fennell cranks up the campery as she reinvents Emily Brontë’s tale of Cathy and Heathcliff on the windswept Yorkshire moor as a 20-page fashion shoot of relentless silliness, with bodices ripped to shreds and a saucy slap of BDSM.
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: “Fennell’s overhaul flirts with insanity, and if you can let go of preconceived notions about how this story should be told, it’s arguably the writer-director’s most purely entertaining film