Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" bears no resemblance to Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights"; in fact, it bears no resemblance to anything outside of Fennell's fevered imagination. This is a true 'Marmite Movie', one you will either love or hate but one which, for most of the time anyway, I loved. Fennell gives us a "Wuthering Heights" as alien as something out of "Avatar", a feast for the eyes and the senses and about as 'real' as the Emerald (sic) City. This is Bronte's plot transferred to some distant universe and I wouldn't have been surprised if a spacecraft had landed at some point.
Purists, of course, will hate it but Fennell knows a young(ish) audience, particularly one who hasn't read the book or seen any of the other screen versions, will lap it up. Visually it's stunning, (DoP is Linus Sandgren), and Jacob Elordi makes for a terrifically brooding Heathcliff who is certainly a man with issues. With this and last year's "Frankenstein" under his belt he is fast becoming one of the best actors of his generation.
There is also excellent work from Martin Clunes as a drunken Mr. Earnshaw, Hong Chau as an unfamiliar Nelly and, best of all, a superbly masochistic Alison Oliver as Isabella. As for Margot Robbie's Cathy, this jury is still out. At first she comes across as a petulant woman-child very much of the 21st century but she gradually grows into the part though never enough to move me. In fact, in hindsight, I've never been moved by this tale of thwarted passion perhaps because the lovers have never seemed sufficiently 'real' to touch me. That said, there is so much here to admire and it certainly marks Fennell out as among the boldest directors working today so ignore the nay-sayers and seek it out for yourselves. You might be as pleasantly surprised as I was.
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