Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are the eye candy in this sexed-up, not-so-sweet new spin on Emily Brontë’s classic tale of toxic love
“Wuthering Heights”
Starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi
Directed by Emerald Fennell
Rated R
In theaters Friday, Feb. 13
When you see children laughing at a hanged man’s visible erection in the opening scene, you know you’re in for a wild ride in director Emerald Fennell’s engorged adaptation of Emily Brontë’s enduring tale of love, longing, obsession and revenge on the bleak, tempest-tossed moors of old England in the 1800s.
There have been dozens of adaptations of Wuthering Heights over the decades, as films, TV series, plays and operas. Fennell, a provocative director (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn) who likes to color outside the lines, wanted quote marks around the title to perhaps suggest that her version takes some, ahem, creative liberties as it romps around the ol’ Yorkshire block. I don’t recall any of the previous versions—with Sir Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Ralph Fiennes and Timothy Dalton—having a soundtrack so heavy on Charli XCX, or a sweaty, voyeuristic BDSM session in the horse barn.
“This” version stars Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi, who plays Heathcliff, who first meet as children (where their characters are played by Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper, who won an Emmy as the young murder suspect in the acclaimed TV miniseries Adolescence) and form a bond that turns into love. Years later, as adults, Catherine marries for money (to the suave aristocrat Edgar Linton, played by Shazad Latif), and the heartbroken Heathcliff gallops away on horseback.
When he returns, shorn of his hirsute, caveman-ish locks and more hunky-cool than swarthy, it sets up the story’s tangled, thorny and ultimately tragic romantic triangle, with loads of horny heavy breathing and heaving sex—in horse-drawn carriages, on beds and kitchen tables, in rain-soaked woodlands and fog-shrouded coastal planes. In between episodes of amped-up amour, Catherine indulges in some self-pleasuring on a rockpile, and Heathcliff gets freaky with a whip, chains…and Linton’s kinky, hot-to-trot sister (Alison Oliver). It’s 50 Shades of Play, Victorian-style.
As one character instructs early on, “Check his breeches for soilage.” Uh, yes.
Gotta give a couple of shoutouts here, to Hong Chou as the see-all, know-all servant Nelly, a paragon of cool restraint in the middle of all the rampant horn-doggery. And esteemed British character actor Martin Clunes plays Catherine’s miserable poppa, Earnshaw. He’s a scene stealer as he wallows in self-inflicted shambles and has trouble holding onto his temper, his money, his estate…and his rotting teeth.
The movie alternates between squalor and sumptuousness, from mud and blood and hog butchering to high-falootin’ parlor games and luxurious boudoirs. Robbie slips into dozens of gowns and dresses, cool little sunglasses and multiple hairstyles. Elordi, the former star of Euphoria who most recently played the “monster” in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, rocks soiled stable-boy peasant wear and, later—after his moorland makeover—a hipster earring and a gold tooth. Sometimes, the whole cinematic experience feels more like watching set changes for a two-hour Vogue photo shoot.
It oozes eroticism but remains emotionally distant, an overheated, overcooked, overstuffed and overwrought exercise in campy style over solid substance, a toxic-relationship tale pairing an eye-candy couple of Hollywood hotties. But if you’re dying for a randy, bodice-bustin’ love story that doesn’t end well, try this one on for size. It may not go down as the definite take on a heartrending romance for the ages, but it’s probably the only flick you’ll see this year with end credits for “candle wrangler,” “horse master” and “tooth molder” as well as drone operators.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 