Hi Ito! I know you criticized the Withering Heights film before it was out, but did you ever end up watching it, even out of curiosity? If so, what did you think?
In brief: Everything was sexual and nothing was sexy.
Yes, I did end up watching it. I spent nine euros and fifty cents to go and see it at my local movie theatre despite being almost certain that I would not enjoy it, though still hoping I would be proven wrong.
As you said, I had criticized the film before it had even come out because every bit of new information we got, annoyed me, as a fan of the original classic. I thought some of Fennell's executive choices on the casting and the dialogue were ridiculous at best, harmful at worst.
But as someone who is now working in a production company, in the general field of marketing, I couldnāt help but be fascinated by the efficiency of the filmās ad strategy.
For lack of a better word, it was rather brainless, the way movie executives seem to think their audiences are also rather brainless. From releasing it on Valentineās Day, to calling it āthe greatest love story ever toldā and the outright use of booktok trope names like āchildhood friends to loversā in the promotional material, it became clear to me very quickly that this adaptation is not failing at grasping the complexity and earnest edge of the source material, but rather wilfully disregards it.
Fennell obviously wanted to adapt the novel in a way that favours aesthetics and second-screen entertainment over substance, and while I personally find many things wrong with that, it is not a crime. In fact, I can respect her dedication to making this project align with her personal brand of macabre weirdness. While unfaithful, it had every opportunity to be very interesting, the way a car crash is interesting.
So tell me why I was bored out of my fucking mind.
I sat there, one hour and an eternity into āWuthering Heightsā, and I found that Iām not so much irritated by the bastardisation of Bronteās work (since I had both expected and accepted it at that point), but merely perplexed by the filmās insistent and failing attempts at convincing me of its eroticism.
Andt wasnāt so bad at first;
I saw Jacob Elordiās fingers dig into the yokey mess of eggs created under his mattress, courtesy of Cathyās practical joke, and I thoughtā Oh. Iām watching a story about sexual repression and forbidden desire. The subtext, although painfully obvious, was very much welcome, if not almost interesting. The characters of the original work, after all, have earned their reputation of being insufferable mainly due to the complexity of their yearning and their paradoxical approach to it. Itās a type of wretched wanting that goes beyond the bounds of the body and ends up driving them both mad.
But after the umpteenth time of watching one of the characters in the film suck on their utensils, jut out their clavicles, or awkwardly stand there with their glistening skin peaking through their rain-soaked clothes soely for me to take in, I thinkā oh. Iām watching porn, actually.
Which I would not mind at all, by the way (I would die before coming onto the internet to sell a 'holier than thou' attitude in the year 2026) had either one of the following things been true;
1- the porn was not called Wuthering Heights
While incredibly sad to me, itās also quite impressive how you have two universally attractive actors on your set, filmed through admittedly beautiful art direction, and yet you are breaking your back trying and failing to make me aroused, or even interested in their supposed love affair.
And thatās just the thing; The concept of a conventionally hot, straight-presenting couple, dressed in conventionally hot outfits, shot beautifully against the gloomy and imposing English countryside, is simply entirely sexless.
Even if you refuse to read their book dynamic as a romance, what Cathy and Heathcliff have is undeniably a bond that surpasses any traditional boundaries. They bring out the worst in each other, but as a reader, you understand that their trauma bond makes every other relationship these characters could have pale in sheer compassion. Imagine the messiest, most immature people you know being in a situationship for more than ten years.
By watching Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie performing their likely sixteenth take of a fleeting glance, and their perfectly poised, controlled expressions of pleasure with practiced efficiency, I remain unconvinced that these characters have anything deeper between them than two people who went on a couple of hinge dates. Them consimating their relationship dilutes their desire of all its crazed intensity and boxes it into the physical realm.
Itās not a matter of bad chemistry exactly, and it certainly isnāt the dialogue, but when everything looks perfect, nothing is.
There is more eroticism between Nikolaj Waldau and Gwendolyn Christie in that scene in Game of Thrones where a borderline septic Jaime who's been said to smell like feces crawls into the same bath as Brienne, and proceeds to tell her about how the Mad King burned babies.
Itās one of the only scenes in the show where nakedness is implied rather than rubbed in the audienceās face as a signal of debauchery, but the sensuality of the scene doesnāt even derive from that implication. Itās in Jaimeās admition that he trusts Brienne; with this information, with seeing him in that wrecked state, with his very life. Itās in the way his face shifts into a perfect mixture of terror and awe when she stands up and feigns hitting him. The audience is not permitted to see her naked the way Jaime is permitted. And at that permission, he cowers further into the water, wanting to make himself small but unable to look away.
Sex without context is just fleshy mechanics. It is, for all intents and purposes, dull. Physical intimacy between Healthcliff and Catheryn in Fennellās Whthering Heights is unnecessary at best, given how the source material is brimming with sensuality in every plane but the physical.
But even if unnecessary, it could have been an interesting addition, had it served as just that: an addition, to the context of who Catheryn and Heathcliff are, and why them being together is not possible. By changing so many aspects of the original text, from Heathcliffās ratial ambiguity, to the implication that he and Cathy are biological half siblings, to his abuse of Isabel for the crime of not being Cathyā the sex in the film ceases to be a frame to the context, but the context itself.
And no matter how beautifully filmed and color-graded, it still makes me yawn.
Charlie xcx's soundtrack was fantastic, however.
