Wuthering Heights in Toronto (I)

Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights was premiered yesterday at the Toronto International Film Festival, with the presence of the director, Andrea Arnold:

Picture: Director Andrea Arnold (L) and Co-Director of TIFF Cameron Bailey arrive at "Wuthering Heights" Premiere at TIFF Bell Lightbox during the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2011 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Peter Bregg/Getty Images)

Positive:
A Fair (she would like some feedback about the film, so if you have seen the film what are you waiting for?):

It reads between Emily Brontë’s lines and excavates what is implied; yet previously unsurfaced in film. In a line of adaptations which blot out sensual realism with swelling music and refined, passionate poses, this adaptation dares to go where we don’t want Wuthering Heights to go: beyond the seeming endless romance to the sinister world of abuse and alienation. (...)
A sensuous film, the cinematography sweeps through the Moors: gutting the murky under-earth of torrid soil, catching a small bird or bug mid-flight, the bloodletting of a sheep, a rabbit caught in a trap. Heathcliff is paired with animal characteristics: he is the trapped rabbit, the hounded dog, the butting horse. It is an elemental and earthy film which sets the landscape up as the character it plays in the novel.  (Rachel)

The Seattle Times:

Andrea Arnold's "Wuthering Heights" is neither sunny nor cheery or romantic -- in other words, it's wonderfully true to Emily Brontë's book, which is not about romance but about dark, dangerous passion. It's an often violent movie, and an often beautiful one; shot on the Yorkshire Moors where the mist seems to be a character in the film. Those looking for a pretty period piece will probably flee the theater early (several did tonight); those looking for a brutally honest depiction of a brilliant, disturbing novel will find it. As she did in "Fish Tank," Arnold uses mostly inexperienced actors here, to good effect; there's not a lot of dialogue, as those moors do a lot of the talking. (Moira MacDonald)

Still covering the Venice screening we find Kent News, Teen Now Magazine...

Variety reports that Prokino will distribute the film in Germany. We don't quite get Amanda Platell's humour in the Daily Mail:

Much excitement over the casting of the beautiful black actor James Howson as Heathcliff in the new version of Wuthering Heights. It's heralded as 'brave', 'gritty' and 'creative vandalism'.
I don't get it. Heathcliff was variously described as a 'dark-skinned gypsy' or a 'Spanish castaway'.
There was no shred of evidence of a brooding black man in Emily Brontë's 1847 novel.
I look forward to the remake of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre — with Edward Rochester played by Jackie Chan.

We are afraid that the tabloid post-Murdoch humour is somewhat in decadence.

On Twitter:
Jakespot: Just saw Wuthering Heights by Andrea Arnold at #TIFF Dark, brutal and beautiful cinematography by Robbie Ryan
aHealthyDisdain: Wuthering Heights is a work of brooding beauty, but Arnold has stripped Brontë's narrative a bit too bare.
carmen_gray:  Wuthering Heights is a startling & cruel sensory assault. arnold gets it just right. there's deep deep emotion, just no easy sentiment.

Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights