Fast-selling Wuthering Heights

More reviews of Andrea Arnold's take on Wuthering Heights. From The Scotsman:

For Wuthering Heights, hitting the right pitch of emotion and romance is even more problematic: each year the Laurence Olivier-Merle Oberon classic becomes more laughable, while Ralph Fiennes rarely mentions his assault on Heathcliff in 1992, in which his brooding gypsy boy runs out to the moors on hearing that his french-accented Cathy (Juliette Binoche) has married another. On and on he runs, only pausing for breath somewhere near Teeside. Whereupon the plumpish housekeeper appears and places a calm hand on his shoulder. “Come back inside, Heathcliff,” she urges. “And have your dinner.”
Andrea Arnold deserves applause for a version of Wuthering Heights that attempts to translate the complex emotion, intelligence and social criticism, whilst adding some boldness of her own, recording it on hand-held camera.
The Yorkshire tourist board will be dismayed that it doesn’t seem to stop raining on the moors until Catherine Earnshaw turns 20, while the homes, clothes and characters look bleak and, despite the constant rain and wind, perpetually grimy. [...]
There’s claustrophobia to their closeness and Arnold is unflinching when it comes to depictions of the mental and physical cruelty inflicted on Heathcliff, which he then inflicts on others. The trouble is that, like Heathcliff, Arnold doesn’t know when to stop. Numerous innocent animals are slaughtered portentously, and if you are fond of doggies, bunnies, lambs and ponies, you will spend a lot of time watching between your fingers. If you merely object to watching metaphors being tormented, you are in for a tough time too.
Some of the acting is also a bit stiff, especially Howson’s, which crucially deflates the fierce passion between the older Heathcliff and Cathy.
Arnold’s film is a rebuke to previous genteel period treatments, but in the end it doesn’t hit any heights. (Siobhan Synnot)

Neither is The Skinny too keen on it, giving it 3 out of 5 stars:

There have been many screen versions of Wuthering Heights but we've never seen one quite like this. Andrea Arnold has brought her bold, uncompromising vision to bear on Emily Brontë's novel, denying us the aesthetic pleasures we normally associate with British costume dramas, and instead investing the movie with a bracing sensuality and simmering violence.
For the first half of the film at least, Wuthering Heights is a stunning achievement, with Malick-like editing immersing us in Arnold's richly atmospheric evocation of 19th century Yorkshire. Newcomers Shannon Beer and Solomon Glave impress as the young leads, but when Heathcliff returns a grown man in the movie's second half, James Howson's limitations as an actor prove problematic.
The film never builds on the potential of its earliest sequences, instead growing repetitive, and it crucially fails to express the heartache of the doomed central romance. Arnold repeatedly asks the anguished Heathcliff to bash his head against a wall or tree, but as painful as this looks, we don't feel it. (Philip Concannon)

Richard Wilcocks discusses the film on the Brontë Parsonage Blog.

Screen Yorkshire reports that

Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights opened the Leeds International Film Festival to a sell-out audience of 900 at Leeds Town Hall on Thursday 3rd November. The Screen Yorkshire backed film became the fastest selling opening film in the festival's 25 year history. An extra screening will take place on Tuesday 8th November.

The London Evening Standard features Kaya Scodelario.

She fretted about Wuthering Heights, to which every young British star was attached at some point, until her agent persuaded her to watch Arnold's gritty hit Fish Tank, and to meet the director for a drink. "She has this strange, calm atmosphere about her," Scodelario says. "I really wanted to open up and tell her everything about me. And the film she's created isn't a period film: it's like a new genre that is timeless. It's gonna upset a few people and delight a few people."
Wuthering Heights is, indeed, a radical piece of work, a stark, realist, impression of Emily Brontë's novel. Heathcliff is played as a boy and an adult by black actors Solomon Glave and James Howson, which makes immediate and perfect sense of Emily Brontë's repeated allusions to the character being dark, foreign and alien, and a nonsense of the pallid white-boy castings of the past. There is an undeniable sexual charge between Howson's Heathcliff and Scodelario's spirited Cathy, who comports herself in a most unladylike fashion, hoicking her legs over horses and chair arms. [...]
The film features Yorkshire accents, swearing, racial abuse, and furious rutting on bleak and muddy fields. The doomed lovers are played for the first half of the film by young teenagers Shannon Beer and the aforementioned Glave, again more truly reflecting Brontë's book. "The biggest thing I think Andrea has done was keeping the characters young," says Scodelario. "If you fall in love at that age, it's very different to falling in love later. Those scenes are so sexually charged but not in a way where you feel uncomfortable. It makes you remember that feeling, the first light in your life." (Nick Curtis)

The Times discusses the increased use of 'foul language' and recalls the latest radio adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

This writer at The Daily Campus doesn't know much about the Brontës but that doesn't stop him from making sweeping statements like this:

The building is old. It reminds me of an old haunted castle from one of the overly dramatic, sappy novels of one of the Brontë sisters. (Joe Richardson)

We don't think there's one single haunted castle in the Brontës' 'overly dramatic, sappy' novels.

Universe considers (erroneously) the Brontës' output to be chicklit:

Often referred to as “romance novels,” “chick-lit,” or “girly books,” the popularity of women’s literature has reached a fever pitch. With a healthy blend of old authors (Austen, Brontë) and new authors (a la Stephenie Meyer), it’s hard for anyone — readers and publishers alike — to ignore the craze. (Alex Hairston)

Finally, an alert from Huesca (Spain) for today, November 8:

II Ciclo de Cine sobre Literatura y Mujeres 
Tuesday, November 8 · 7:00pm - 9:30pm
Location Centro Cultural Genaro Poza de Huesca, Calle Barbastro 8
La Asociación Aveletra y el Instituto Aragonés de la Mujer os invitamos el próximo martes a la inauguración de nuestro II Ciclo de Cine sobre Literatura y Mujeres, que lleva por título 'Gótico anglosajón', un paseo por las tinieblas de cuatro escritoras'. La primera proyección será 'Jane Eyre', dirigida por Peter (sic) Stevenson y basada en la novela de la escritora británica Charlotte Brönte (sic). La socia de Aveletra, Patricia Hueso, será la encargada de presentar la cinta.

EDIT: El Heraldo de Aragón (Spain) talks about this presentation.

A Gallimaufry posts about Jane Eyre and Blog-a-Ball reviews Villette. Catherine Ensley's Words World and Wings reviews The House of Dead Maids. Sherlock Fics links to the first chapter of a fan fiction creation called The Murders at Thornfield Hall; A Jane Eyre AU.