Bold and personal are the words which best describe the adaptation of Emily Brontë’s gothic novel published in 1847, Wuthering Heights, a movie directed by Emerald Fennell who previously gave us Promising Young Woman [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], which won her an Oscar for Best Screenplay in 2020, and the controversial title Saltburn [+lire aussi :
critique
fiche film] (2023). The trailer released back in the autumn revealed the focus placed on the story’s sexual content. And we can now confirm that the film is being distributed in Europe and all around the world from 11 February by Warner Bros. Pictures and that the content of this novel is definitely explored far more grotesquely than in any other film version of this story.

Taking on the lead role of Catherine Earnshaw is Margot Robbie, who produced Fennell’s two previous films, sharing her desire to depict female emancipation in film. The choice of the Barbie protagonist was criticised by purists because, in the novel, the character of Catherine is a dark-haired teenager whereas the Australian actress is blond and 35. Margot Robbie was also highly supportive of casting Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, who’s described in the novel as a “gypsy” “with dark skin”.

But these aren’t the most discordant notes struck by the film vis-a-vis the novel. The story itself has been rewritten to the point it barely resembles the original. Set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire moors, the novel revolves around Cathy’s brother, Hindley, but he’s been totally erased from the film, as has the entire second half of the book. In the film, Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) is an impertinent and spoiled little girl with a rich father: a phenomenal Martin Clunes who steals each and every scene and whom Fennell endows with Hindley’s vices from the novel, namely drinking and gambling. One day, Mr Earnshaw rescues a young urchin (Owen Cooper, the young star of the Adolescence [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche série] series) from the streets of Liverpool while on business and brings him home to adopt him. Cathy gives him her dead little brother’s name, Heathcliff, and initially sees him more as a pet to play with than an adopted brother. But with time, the two teens become inseparable friends despite their different social backgrounds.

As adults (enter Robbie and Elordi), their mutual attraction grows in urgency, but there’s no way for them to consummate their passion or even admit their feelings for one another. While Mr Earnshaw fritters away the final remains of the family inheritance, Cathy marries their new rich yet timid neighbour, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). Heartbroken, Heathcliff leaves, silhouetted against the sunset as he galops away on horseback. He returns five years later, rich and driven by a thirst for revenge, and he marries Edgar’s submissive sister, Isabella (Alison Oliver), subjecting her to soft BDSM (which the young woman is only too pleased to receive). But Catherine and Heathcliff’s passion can finally explode, and they embark upon an undeniably steamy secret relationship, having wild sex in bedrooms, carriages and on the moors themselves.

From the very first sequence – a hanging in the town square during which several women make unkind remarks about the convict’s post-mortem erection - Fennell plays with shameless erotism observed from a female perspective. It’s an emotional response to something primordial - as the director herself states - which shocked her deeply when she read the novel for the first time at fourteen years of age. Unspoken feelings and desires in the novel are continually made explicit here, by way of highly unsubtle metaphors - sticky egg yolks, slugs crawling through their slimy mucus and soft bread dough – alluding to intimate bodily secretions.

The film’s aesthetics are brought into the modern-day thanks to the costumes worn by Robbie and designed by Oscar winner Jacqueline Durran, which draw upon the Elizabethan and Victorian eras - with clear homage paid to the red dress worn by Rossella O’Hara in Gone With the Wind - and contemporary fashion creations; Suzie Davies’ set design which harks back to Barbie; Anthony Willis’ score and Charlie XCX’s questionable hyperpop. There’s no need to point out that these kinds of film generally do well with audiences who want to see stories they’re already familiar with, ensuring certain success among younger audiences for a film which takes a book delving deep inside of love and loss and exploring the unfurling of a noxious and self-destructive passion, before deconstructing and reconstructing the story at will, expressing its passion with wild and grotesque intensity.

Wuthering Heights was produced by Lie Still & LuckyChap Entertainment.