Movie Review – Wuthering Heights

For those of us familiar with the source material, Wuthering Heights is not a romance novel. It’s a generational saga about an obsessive relationship that ends up in a twisted revenge plot that negatively affects everyone around the central characters. I knew the moment the trailer for Emerald Fennell’s adaptation landed that this new film would leave out the whole point of the novel – that destroying innocent people serves no real purpose and that revenge is the real villain – and would instead concentrate on Catherine and Heathcliff’s tortured romance. I went into this movie knowing that, and it’s the main reason I didn’t hate it.

If you’re unfamiliar, when Catherine was a girl, her alcoholic father took in a boy as a servant. Catherine names him Heathcliff and the two strike up a friendship that turns to love as they age. When Catherine chooses to marry a rich neighbor to get out of the destitution her father created by gambling away their money, Heathcliff leaves brokenhearted. He returns years later rich and finds Catherine’s marriage holding on. He begins his revenge plot on her, her husband, her sister in law, and her father. It destroys everyone involved.

Fennell’s take on this story does one thing extremely well. It uses the setting, the Yorkshire moors in Northern England, to accentuate the bleak, moody relationship central to the plot. Rolling fogs and sharp rock formations mimic the personalities of Catherine and Heathcliff. Each has hard edges, but their complicated relationship rolls in and out of love and anger so often sometimes it’s hard to see through the mist.

Both of the homes created, Catherine’s dark childhood home and her husband Edgar’s colorful mansion, also show Catherine’s need to project the life she is supposed to want, not the one she gave up to marry Edgar. The mansion is dressed in bright reds, blues, and Edgar’s room expertly decorated in green. The color of envy which overtakes him when he discovers what Heathcliff really is to Catherine. The childhood home decays with time, falling into disarray and disrepair as her father drinks himself to death and Heathcliff’s revenge erodes whatever redeeming qualities he may have had.

As the trailer suggests, the costumes are rich with color and bejeweled with everything sparkly. Delicate laces accentuate the fragility of Catherine and Isabella. In the costuming of Isabella, yellow and gold accents are used to show her innocent nature and when she is married to Heathcliff, these accents show her descent into abused madness. Catherine’s costumes often contain red which shows her fiery nature. There are montages of Catherine’s married life that are reminiscent of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette but have an underlying edge to them as if Catherine’s feigned happiness will implode at any moment. I could have done without the see through dress Catherine wears on her wedding night, but that is the only example of where the wardrobe went wrong.

The cast shows up with their whole heart. Everyone is great except for Jacob Elordi who is simply good. Half the time I could barely understand his brooding tones and having seen his brilliant take as Frankenstein’s monster, he left me disappointed here. What surprised me was Allison Oliver as Isabella who turns in a performance dripping with fragility even as her character complies with Heathcliff’s darkest side.

Those are the highlights. The things I loved because this film is so pretty to look at and the soundtrack created by Charlie XCX is hauntingly beautiful. Unfortunately, my love stops there. The movie, like most adaptations of this, ignores how this relationship between these two awful people affects the next generation. What could have been a beautiful film about the downside of revenge and how it never offers us the catharsis we are looking for is instead an erotic montage of longing and selfishness that wants to be Romeo and Juliet meets Fifty Shades of Gothic Monsters. It’s real pretty, but a bit shallow in the consequences department.

If you’re looking for a period piece with a tragic love story, you’ll enjoy this. Just know that none of these characters are redeemable. All do terrible things to one another. Catherine’s father wears his abominable nature under yellow eyes and decaying teeth. Heathcliff and Catherine hide theirs behind love. Nelly, a maid and companion, twists her animosity into her own revenge. None are innocent.

If you’re a fan of the book, perhaps you’ll be disappointed the most in Isabella’s character who instead of willfully escaping her abusive marriage to Heathcliff to raise their son alone remains complicit in her own demise. If you’re worried about her dog, fear not. Heathcliff doesn’t hang it from a chair on their wedding night in the movie like he does in the book. Probably a good thing for no one wants to watch that.

3 out 5 stars for this beautiful movie that unsurprisingly lacks the depth of the novel.