This overwrought, over dramatic film with its striking sets and stunning stars is gloriously costumed, but becomes an exercise in directorial hubris. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi eventually make a stunning couple who can’t keep their hands, or anything, else, off each other. But despite too many long, pointless, repetitive lust-filled sex scenes, a deep emotional attachment is sorely lacking. Writer/Director, Emerald Fennell (Saltburn, Promising Young Woman) has taken many liberties with Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 novel. This adaptation by may be controversial to Brontë fans.
Yes, Cathy is a gorgeous rebellious little girl living with her brutal alcoholic gambler father Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes) and no mother. Nelly (Hong Chau) is Cathy’s chaperon, steadfastly trying to make sure the precocious Cathy was kept in check.
Earnshaw is a lord, down on his luck and he takes in a young street urchin boy, he names Heathcliff after Cathy’s deceased brother. Earnshaw makes him an indentured servant, giving him to Cathy as her pet. They become close playmates as children, both trying to stay away from the wrath of her often unruly drunk Dad. But when they returned home late on Earnshaw’s birthday, the brute beats Heathcliff badly, leaving scars for a lifetime.
As Cathy grows up, she has dreams of grandeur setting her sights on the Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), the rich new neighbor in textiles. Fennell makes him the brown-skinned character in this production instead of Heathcliff who was described in Brontë’s original work as a gypsy. When she decides to set her sights on marrying Linton, the now disheveled Heathcliff decides to leave if he can’t have her. But before he departs, Fennel puts in a graphic scene where Heathcliff comes upon Cathy pleasuring herself that portends what will eventually happen between them.
With Heathcliff gone, Cathy, tin the garden trying to get close to Linton, breaks her ankle and his sister Isabella invites her to heal in their palatial estate. Cathy beguiles Linton into marriage and Fennell pulls out the stops detailing Cathy’s new rich life in the upper class. The opulent sets and the costuming, are unbelievably extravagant. Robbie in exquisite period dresses, with sparkling accessories to match, is an overabundance of excess. That strangely includes a wall of skin that Linton had specially made fo his wife. Robbie is gorgeous in every color of every massive gown, well-coifed and bejeweled by her doting husband.
But when Heathcliff returns years later having accrued education and wealth of his own, he buys Earnshaw’s decrepit Wuthering Heights House where he grew up as a boy. Cathy cannot resist Heathcliff and they become each other’s sensual target. Fennell goes over the top when sex takes over this film. Fennell has Heathcliff and Cathy in a series of sexy trysts that go on forever, which becomes more of a distraction to the story. Their constant passion actually gets boring.
So do the melodramatic scenes in the final act. When Cathy’s father dies, she goes to see him in the filthy manor she grew up in now owned by Heathcliff. The serious scene is laughable showing mounds of empty wine bottles intentionally stacked in the shape of Christmas trees in the corners of the room where her father’s body lies. She kicks the corpse in a final act of defiance.
Robbie and Elordi commit, not only in their steamy scenes, but in their dual descents into madness. This tragic tale of miscommunication in a doomed relationship Fennell has overproduced with more excessive style than substance. More is not always better.
Warner Bros 2 hours 16 minutes R
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