Wuthering Depths, Or the Lack Thereof: A Review

Spending Valentine’s Day thousands of miles apart from one’s significant other can be a drag. Naturally, this is how I found myself watching Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights on the third floor of a megatheater, sharing a loveseat and several bottles of rosé with my best friend in France, who got us these highly demanded tickets for a special Valentine’s Day couples discount. 

I read Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights last year for ENG 205: The Victorian Gothic (shoutout Jay Dickson) and thought it was decently interesting, if something of a chore to read. Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation, however, felt like it lasted forever while accomplishing nothing. I’m not a diehard fan of the novel, so I wasn’t picking up on every miniscule change, but I did not jive with the film’s choice to cut out large portions of the latter half of the novel, including entire significant story arcs. 

Wuthering Heights does a fantastic job of simulating what a puritanical Victorian probably thought of Emily Bronte’s original Gothic novel, which is to say that it makes sex seem simultaneously trivial, grotesque, and unpleasant. This is not a problem in itself, yet the (ob)noxious sexualization of the film clashes with both its marketing as a Valentine’s romance movie and the heavy themes of domestic abuse in the original novel. Don’t even get me started on Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s behind-the-scenes campaign to become the next Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly, a development absolutely nobody was asking for. 

Let me be clear: my problem is not that Wuthering Heights is freaky. As the great John Waters once said, “Get more out of life. See a fucked up movie.” I couldn’t agree more. In fact, my problem is that this film is not nearly freaky enough for the fact that “being freaky for shock value” is its only discernible logic. Everybody is constantly fingering everything, because why not, but that does not a sexy movie make. If the fish gelatin mold really does it for you, I guess I can’t judge, but these gimmicks amount to absolutely nothing of substance. We don’t even get any real proper drawn-out sex scenes, just montages. As such, the sexual aspects just compound upon all the other bizarre details of the plot and design to create a confused, anchorless film where nothing really happens. In the absence of fully formed characters and plotlines, shock value is the only thing to keep the viewer watching.

Throughout the film’s substantial two-hour runtime, there is little meaningful buildup or development of the relationships of any of the characters. Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) are supposed to be the romance driving the film, yet their chemistry is barely there and their childhood friendship is only shown in surface-level ways. Of course, their relationship is also horribly toxic, just like the source material, but that’s not the biggest problem with this film. The lack of detail behind the supporting cast is even more dire. Cathy’s father is an abusive alcoholic who gambled away all his money, which you can tell because he lives in a dilapidated house with piles of gin bottles reaching to the ceiling. These are some Tom and Jerry levels of storytelling out here. Even the supporting characters who are set up to have interesting stories, such as Nelly Dean, the narrator of the novel, are left making random actions in a void due to the lack of foundation for their backstories and motivations.

Much has already been said in the press about the whitewashed casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. In the original novel, Heathcliff is described in ambiguously racialized terms, which is a central part of his thematic role as a lower-status outsider to the social hierarchy of 19th-century England. The nonwhite coding of Heathcliff in the novel brings with it various derogatory and stereotypical implications, but this dimension of his character could be explored with much more depth in a modern adaptation. This adaptation already shows it is interested in diverse casting, with Vietnamese actress Hong Chau playing Nelly and mixed Pakistani and English actor Shazad Latif playing Cathy’s husband Edgar. However, the casting direction of this film seemingly did not see fit to apply the same principle to the leading roles, even despite the textual basis.

Unfortunately, Emerald Fennell did not address Heathcliff’s race, nor any aspect of his character more complex than a TikTok mafia thirst trap. Beyond the erasure of Heathcliff’s race, the removal of the second half of the book leaves out the true impact of Heathcliff’s rise in status from urchin to lord of the manor, and with it much of the novel’s commentary on social class. Without any well-developed thematic backing, the film feels very surface-level, like a really long trailer that doesn’t end.

The whole film looks like a perfume commercial, which is not necessarily a critique. I even liked bizarre details such as the wall painted to look like Cathy’s skin, because at least it showed a good setup and payoff with the irony of the mouths of Jacob Elordi and then a leech making contact with said wall. Nothing matters. There is absolutely no commitment to historical accuracy in the costuming, at least for Margot Robbie, who looks like she’s wearing plastic multiple times. However, these design choices at least reflect a semblance of a vision, something which is sorely lacking in the film’s plot and characters.

In her past two films, Emerald Fennell has already tried her hand at some of the great tropes of the past two centuries, tackling 19th-century Gothic romance with Wuthering Heights and riffing on the great 20th-century tortured homoeroticism genre with Saltburn (remember those simple times?). For her next trick, I propose that she should retreat one century further and make freaky Candide. Nothing even matters. I guess I should thank Wuthering Heights for making three more months of study-abroad-induced celibacy seem so much more appealing. You, too, can reinforce any Lenten vows of abstinence you may have by going to see this movie. If that isn’t high praise, I don’t know what is.