"Wuthering Heights" review

 Those quotation marks, deliberately placed around the title on posters, tell you a lot about the latest big screen version of Emily Bronte’s classic. Their presence is both somewhat pretentious and also a suggestion that aficionados of the story may find this film not quite what they expected.  Not so much the Wuthering Heights as a Wuthering Heights. Even those of us who’ve never read the book are familiar with it’s beats and its mix of bleak landscape and unbridled passion that has inspired a number of versions, shameless copycats and even the famous pop song.

Emerald Fennell definitely knows how to start a film. Following on from Saltburn’s opening deployment of `Zadok the Priest`, her new adaptation of the classic novel begins with a clever sound trick that makes you think you’re listening to one thing before the reveal as to what is actually happening. Then there is another gloriously loud musical intro as we move around a public hanging, a day out for all the family back then. It is certainly an arresting curtain raiser to a movie that never holds back from extravagance and is extremely theatrical from the dirty hovels to the well appointed drawing rooms the tale spans.

Often the camera lingers on large, shiny slate black rain soaked buildings that jut into the dull sky like alien monoliths The poor wear shades of grey and brown, the rich sport accentuated colours, deep reds in particular. It rains almost as much as it has this year. Many visual cues are presented as salacious even if they are simply smashed eggs and when a character who drinks too much is found dead, on either side of him are empty bottles piled to the ceiling in pyramids. Whether symbolism or just trying to impress, Fennell and her cinematographer Linus Sangren drench every frame in the earthiness of Yorkshire and never miss a trick when it comes it giving this film an individual tonality, completely soaked in the rainy atmosphere.

Bronte-heads will tell you the film perpetrates errors made in previous adaptions, notably that in the novel Heathcliff is black and Cathy is fifteen. The fact that they also show them as kids (both Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper are really good) only draws attention to this anomaly. In a story that is supposed to be about class as well as lust and love that is an anomaly especially in the case of Margot Robbie (whom incidentally I think is a fantastic actor) who is twice the age of her character. This means that for all her sterling effort it just seems odd for this Cathy to be behaving with such teen adoration though she does capture the feisty nature of this character who is hard to like. While the narrative blame for all that  goes wrong often falls on Nelly Dean (and she is complicit - burning letters, not saying things when she should), Cathy herself is at fault.

When the nameless, silent boy is taken in reluctantly by her father, she names him and even says she will keep him as a plaything. As she grows up, despite what she says of love, she still seems to view him as a possession. Devastated when he shoves off, she settles for a gilded but dissatisfied life as the wife of rich textile merchant Edgar Lindon who himself is a little creepy, choosing wallpaper that replicates her skin tones. When Heathcliff comes back, inexplicably now much richer, their passion is renewed under the nose of her husband and even though she is pregnant.

It is no spoiler to say that the novel opens with Cathy already deceased (the Kate Bush song is about her ghost haunting Heathcliff) whereas here that is the climax of the film. So we get to see the relationship’s twists and turns, the way others seek to effect and manipulate it. A lot of what is described in the pre credits warning as “strong sex” is surprisingly tame with the camera turning away from graphic detail or anything too gratuitous. However, Fennell does seem to like to display the sexual emotion using other symbols- smashed eggs, whiplash marks, chains or lots of weather. It’s meant to be steamy but sometimes seems awkward.

Notwithstanding the casting issues mentioned above., both lead actors do their best with these torrid roles. Margot Robbie’s Cathy is the showier role, her moods and changes of heart well conveyed while Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff is mostly required to brood and utter some Yorkshire `tell it like it is` sentences. The really impressive performance comes from Martin Clunes who plays Cathy’s father (with the role also incorporating some material that in the book is from her brother). He is full blooded about it, the customary Clunes twinkle often replaced by a nasty, bitter brutality that will shock Doc Martin fans and really shows the actor’s range.

From that early peak, the film does take a long time to tell its story while omitting  details we might like to know, notably how Heathcliff ends up with money. The narrative suggests ill treatment is learned as Heathcliff eventually becomes as cruel as the man who took him in while Cathy’s tantrums do start to wear - after a couple of hours you feel like shouting “For goodness sake girl, get a grip!” Its in the final stretch that the actor’s ages work against them most; they behave like teenagers but they are adults and it is weird. For all the fuss and bother, the story never truly sparks fully aflame- the passion and the lust subsumed by the whole package.

Of course it’s a melodramatic scenario - this is the sort of film where the bride walks across the  countryside in a gigantic billowing white dress- and in that sense works, capturing the dark appeal of the moors with their breadth encapsulating the distance that grows between the two sometime lovers. All that’s missing is some grandiose operatic arias; often this feels like it would be a better stage play than a film. This version of Wuthering Heights is brash, enigmatic and powerful yet in the end a triumph of style over substance.