Emerald Fennell Wuthering Heights

Considering the obvious comparisons of Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights to Sofia Coppola’s work, perhaps there’s a chance that, one day, Fennell’s take on this staple of gothic literature will also be vindicated. For, when Coppola’s Marie Antoinette was first released in 2006, it wasn’t exactly met with the same reverence it currently invokes from audiences and Pinterest boards. This largely due to the same combination of reasons that Fennell is up against with Wuthering Heights. For a start, many (especially the French) didn’t “gel” with the fact that Antoinette and the entire Louis XVI “administration” were portrayed in a way that wasn’t overtly “chastising” or “faithful to ‘the original’” (in this instance, that would be both Coppola’s general rendering of these historical figures and the source material that she referred to, which was Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette: The Journey). Yet, like Fennell mentioning repeatedly that this is herinterpretation of Wuthering Heights, Coppola, too, tried to tell people that, “It is an interpretation…carried by my desire for covering the subject differently.”

Fennell, in her way, wanted to cover Wuthering Heights differently in the sense of trying to recapture how she viewed the material and felt while reading it for the first time as a horny teenager. So yes, this is, in part, why the film comes across as “reductive” and, to some, nothing more than a montage of sexual “canoodling” shot in the “music video style” (for which Flashdance can be “blamed” for setting this kind of precedent in film). The overall effect turning Emily Brontë’s source material into what amounts to the cover art for a bodice-ripping paperback-meets-Bridgerton. And maybe that would be more “acceptable” to audiences if, say, Guillermo del Toro decided to adapt Wuthering Heights. For no one seemed to bat an eyelash at just how “compromised” his take on Frankenstein (also starring Jacob Elordi) is—that it, too, reduced the complexities of a gothic novel to something “pretty” and “palatable.” Worse still, a “Netflix movie” (a prospect that Fennell nobly shot down by taking the lower monetary offer from Warner Bros. so that Wuthering Heights would have a proper movie theater release). Yet, somehow, del Toro’s “bastardization” has secured the movie nine Oscar nominations at this year’s Academy Awards. Needless to say, Fennell’s work will instead be relegated to the Razzie Awards. Because, yes, once again, there is a clear double standard for what women in general and women writer-directors specifically are “allowed” to do. Fennell, in trying to offer a frothier version of a literary classic, has found this out in spades.

Then again, it’s likely that the mind behind Promising Young Woman is already well-aware of the ways in which women are working at a constant disadvantage. Hence, Fennell’s “fuck it” approach to making Wuthering Heights exactly how she wanted to, right down to the last meticulous set design-oriented detail (shoutout to the “Skin Room”). These being just the sort of details that Coppola’s films have become known for, with Marie Antoinette as the frequent “exemplar” of her style and approach. Though, incidentally, it was The Beguiled (itself a remake) that Fennell cited as a cinematic inspiration to the look and feel of Wuthering Heights. This in addition to, fittingly, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (which Fennell stated she saw as a teenager around the same time she first read Wuthering Heights). Indeed, there is a pointed scene in the film, just before Catherine (Margot Robbie) makes her grand introduction to Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), that Isabella Linton (Alison Oliver, who, like Elordi, joined a Fennell cast yet again after Saltburn) gives her assessment of Shakespeare’s original work to her “guardian” (for Edgar is no longer her brother in this adaptation, hence a gross comment made by Catherine’s father about how he’s surprised Edgar hasn’t married Isabella yet, billed, in this scenario, as his “ward”). Telling her “caretaker” that, as far as she’s concerned, The Nurse was to blame for everything that went wrong between Romeo and Juliet because of her ineptitude at promptly delivering messages and information. Naturally, this serves as major foreshadowing for what’s to come in terms of Nelly’s (Hong Chau) dynamic with Catherine, and being the primary catalyst for curdling the romance she shares with Heathcliff.

As for Nelly, it’s her representation that’s got Wuthering Heights purists up in arms—though it’s only second to their upset over Elordi playing Heathcliff. However, it must be said that if a dark-skinned man had been cast in the role, there would have probably been upset over Aryan-looking Robbie treating him like her “pet,” creating another political hot potato that modern audiences can’t handle regardless. Because you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t when it comes to adaptations. Thus, the apropos line from Elordi’s Heathcliff when he tells Catherine, “So kiss me, and let us both be damned.” It’s obvious that Fennell was willing to be when it came to telling this story on her own terms. And, in addition to Marie Antoinette, Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet lit the path for her to do so, with Fennell telling the British Film Institute,

“I think at the time there was a certain amount of pearl-clutching about [Romeo + Juliet] not being faithful, but it couldn’t be more faithful because it is William Shakespeare’s words. So for me with Wuthering Heights, it was like, ‘Well, you can’t make Romeo and Juliet in the same way that you can’t make Wuthering Heights because they’re too good.’ You can only make the thing it made you feel. You can just make this one thing specific to you and understand that it won’t be for everyone.”

Fennell predicted the “not being for everyone” phenomenon for sure, with most of the reviews thus far being utterly eviscerating, branding the film as everything from an “astonishingly bad adaptation [that’s] like a limp Mills & Boon” (The Independent) and an “adaptation as shallow as a puddle glittering in the sun” (CNN). But it’s important to note that there was a similar level of outrage (though, honestly, not nearly as pervasive) about Luhrmann and Coppola’s projects. Films that would later become venerated rather than reviled. Though, at the moment, it’s difficult to ever see a future in which “Wuthering Heights” might get some respect (those quote marks being Fennell’s “get out of criticism free” card for not faithfully adapting the book). And that’s not least of which because Fennell, as the CNN review put it, has “made a film for cinephiles, not the bookworms.” To be sure, there’s also more than a slight touch of the Greta Gerwig approach to Barbie (another Robbie-starring joint) in her filmmaking process, which is heavily reliant on drawing visual inspiration/cues from other movies (the ones considered “canonical”). While promoting Barbie, Gerwig often recited the films that were most influential to helping her craft the visual language for her own project (said films included The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death [which Fennell also cited for Wuthering Heights], The Wizard of Oz, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, among others).

Fennell has been obliged to do the same, making no secret of the movies that have crept into Wuthering Heights (Gone With the Wind being one of the more unexpected choices). Except, well, she hasn’t mentioned The Shining much (save for telling Charli XCX it’s her favorite of all-time during YouTube’s Watch History segment). Even though there’s plenty of The Shining-codedness within the oppressive walls of Thrushcross Grange, painted as they are in “arterial blood red” (Fennell’s words). Not to mention Charli XCX and John Cale’s “House” speaking to the kind of sealed doom Jack Torrance was met with by ever agreeing to move into the Overlook Hotel as much as it does to Catherine moving into Thrushcross Grange. This after reluctantly agreeing to marry Edgar, even after telling Nelly of Heathcliff, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

That kind of “sentiment,” to the critics, means nothing, since they all seem to be looking for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (as the 1992 version starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche was titled) rather than “Wuthering Heights.” Just as, in Marie Antoinette’s day, audiences were looking for a more vitriolic portrait of the profligate princess-turned-queen. But now, lo and behold, the movie has been reevaluated as one of Coppola’s best, not to mention the acknowledgement of how misunderstood it was when it first came out. Even so, the “critical consensus” of it on Rotten Tomatoes still reads, “Lavish imagery and a daring soundtrack set this film apart from most period dramas; in fact, style completely takes precedence over plot and character development in Coppola’s vision of the doomed queen.” Swap out “Coppola’s” for “Fennell’s” and “queen” for “lovers” and it could just as easily be a consensus about Wuthering Heights. The criticism of “style over substance” being a tried-and-true one when it comes to knocking a director down a peg.

But that’s likely no matter to Fennell. Because, as the British Film Institute put it, “What matters to Fennell is that an audience feels something rather than nothing.” Even if that feeling, at this point in time, is unmitigated rage and contempt where it ought to be lust and yearning. But, who knows, maybe someday, Wuthering Heights could appreciate in value as Marie Antoinette has. Particularly since the two are so visually intertwined. Granted, Coppola is much less afraid of a slow pace.