So are we drinking the Wuthering Heights (now streaming on HBO Max, in addition to VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) bathwater, or are we scowling at it in disgust? That’s the question of the day, my friends. Hot-button filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s third provocative outing after Saltburn and Promising Young Woman is a version of Emily Bronte’s 1847 all-timer of an English novel, albeit stripped down to bare bones covered in sweaty goosepimples. Fennell famously turned down $150 million from Netflix and took $80 million from Warner Bros. so the film could enjoy theatrical release, and the gamble worked – it was a $250-plus million worldwide hit, and its damp, soupy atmospherics (I’m guessing about $60 million of that budget went towards fog machines) and lush photography look even more stunning on a big screen. Oh, and so do its stars, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, who lick each other up and down more than I remember from the novel. Not that I remember much. It’s been a while. And that’s probably for the better in this case. [...]What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Different Brontë sister, but Cary Fukunaga’s spooky, horror-coded 2011 take on Jane Eyre is highly memroable. And Sophia Coppola is a clear influence – see the many brilliantly styled anachronisms in Marie Antionette.Performance Worth Watching: Of course Elordi and Robbie are magnetic, even in underwritten roles. But what a movie like this needs, and gets, is a weird little wacko supporting character who steals scenes like Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road, and we get one in Oliver’s hilarious, screw-loose characterization of Isabella, whose every display of lovely decoupage inevitably looks like engorged human genitalia. Crafty girl, this one.Sex And Skin: Buckets of it, although we see no bits, butts or boobs.Our Take: So: Are we slurping up Wuthering Heights or not? A little. Not heartily mind you, but Fennell heats up a frothy concoction that’s worth some sips, especially if you’re not a traditionalist potentially upset by significant alterations of the source material. Personally, I care not for authenticity of adaptation, and admire the audacity of Fennell’s interpretation, which indulges sloppy pig slaughter, big oozy snails leaving trails on windows, the slapping-flesh sounds of bread dough being kneaded, a pile of pink hairless pig’s feet that look like dicks, a couple instances of BDSM, a soundtrack heavy with Charli XCX, and the walls of Cathy’s bedroom at the Linton mansion, which are pink with freckles and delicately veiny, modeled after her luminescent skin. Fennell has never been afraid of getting fetishy with her films, but Wuthering Heights takes the cake and smashes it on everybody’s tits. So to speak.This is Fennell feeding Masterpiece Theatre or Merchant-Ivory into the meat grinder. This is no stodgy period piece bursting with repressed yearning. Its throb ‘n’ heave is considerable, even if its horniness is somewhat restrained at times, a few hairs shy of going over the top. Of course, it’s still ridiculous, a story set in a universe where logic is less than nil and passion is all, and narrative and thematic sloppiness is a byproduct most of us can deal with, in the context of the director’s robust and sensual visual aesthetic. (What’s the movie “about”? Death, sex and weather, in the broadest terms.) This is absolutely gorgeous trash, Fennell roping us in with meticulous and rigorously conceptualized eye candy and rubbing our face in egg yolks, pig’s blood and assorted varieties of mucus or mucus-adjacent substances.You likely know the basic what-happens of the Wuthering plot, but not the how, and within that margin Fennell gets playful, gross, lusty and funny. There’s absolutely no way you’ll take a single second of this seriously; it’s sexual obsession transformed into a sort of deranged comedy, intentional or otherwise, and Elordi and Robbie, faced with sketchy and uninspired renderings of their characters, lean heavily into their ability to explode screens with concupiscence. Try as I might, I can’t argue against that.The punkish lack of respect for classical English lit means you won’t likely feel emotionally involved enough to sense the depths of Cathy and Heathcliff’s pain, considering how much thematic barley this movie harvests from skin. Just skin. Skin everywhere – beading up, blushing pink, scarred and bleeding, on faces and bosoms and backs, even the damn walls around this joint. (You might actually wish it went a little farther here in the era of best picture Oscar nominee The Substance.) Wuthering Heights is all blood, sweat and tears, but unlike Saltburn, no semen, surprisingly. Progress? Or regression? Yeah, no. Sure? Maybe. You tell me. Inevitably, the liquids run low, and the film doesn’t end, it just slowly bleeds out, like a hog with its throat slashed. Come to think of it, maybe that’s what Fennell does to the source material. But so fucking what?Our Call: Wuthering Heights, wuthering blights on traditional literature. Approach it like it’s a very expensive soap opera and you’ll have a pretty damn good time. STREAM IT. (John Serba)
Con Cumbres Borrascosas, Emerald Fennell deja de lado la reverencia al texto original para ofrecer una adaptación que responde más a su propia sensibilidad autoral que a la tradición literaria. Es una propuesta arriesgada y, por momentos, irregular, pero también apasionada y visualmente potente. Si en Saltburn la obsesión se expresaba a través del exceso, aquí se canaliza mediante la estilización y la emotividad. El resultado es una versión distinta, provocadora y decididamente contemporánea de un clásico eterno. (Laia Cabuli) (Translation)
Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights has landed a new UK streaming home in time for the Bank Holiday weekend. Whether you're going in for a rewatch or a first watch, it's available to watch right now.Warner Bros has now added Wuthering Heights to HBO Max, but there is an important caveat if you're a subscriber in the UK. The Basic with Ads plan – which is included in the Sky Ultimate subscription or automatically given to existing NOW Entertainment subscribers – doesn't include brand-new Warner Bros movies.You'll need either the Standard with Ads plan (£5.99/month), Standard without ads (£9.99/month) or the 4K-enabled Premium tier (£14.99/month) to be able to watch the movie today, (...) However, HBO Max is not the only way to stream the movie tonight as Wuthering Heights has also now been added to Sky Cinema and NOW (with a Cinema membership). (Joe Anderton)
“Wuthering” is a Northern English term for a strong, roaring wind or a storm-lashed place, which is highly appropriate for Emily Brönte’s only novel – Cathy and Healthcliff’s tempestuous story of passion and revenge. It’s a harder sell for a holiday.That hasn’t stopped ‘Moorcore’ from becoming the latest trend in UK breaks. And what is Moorcore? It's a move-on from the cutesy cottagecore vibe (all roses round the windows, thatched roofs and cats curled by the fire). It’s wild and free. The feeling of standing atop a gritstone edge, a heathery moorland vista stretching to the horizon, tumbling waterfalls, fairy glens, fresh air in your lungs.There’s no better place to channel moorcore than on Haworth Moor – whose wild, heather-strews footpaths were well-traipsed by the Brontës. Two miles from their parsonage, Royds Hall Cottage is marked on maps from 1847, the very year Wuthering Heights published, and it’s likely it was a familiar sight for the sisters on their rambles. As we arrive, the breeze tusseling daffodils along the embankment and a buzzard hovering above, it feels magical. [...]On an energetic five-and-a-half mile loop from the cottage front door, we took in the waterfall at Lumb Beck (detailed in Charlotte’s letters to her friend, Ellen) and the desolate farmhouse at Top Withens – said to be the setting for Cathy and Healthcliff’s home. From there, across the moorland paths we discovered the Fairy Kirk at Ponden Clough (‘Penistone Crags’ in the novel), and beautiful Ponden Hall, which Emily Brontë used as Edgar Linton’s Thrushcross Grange and where her sister Anne set The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.Around Top Withens and the waterfall, there were scores of walkers admiring the famous views but, only a crow-call beyond, we saw barely a soul – just swooping curlews with their strange warbling cries and a roe deer bouncing off into the distance. It’s easy to find both wild inspiration and, afterwards, scones and clotted cream at Ponden Mill.In the other direction, Haworth village was less than an hour’s stroll. It's the focal point of Brontë pilgrimage, so it was busy – yet still so beguiling, with a sense of the sisters at every turn. Visiting on foot meant we could skip the car park and enter the village – just as they would have – from the footpath at the end of Church Street.Their house (now an unmissable museum) is the first you come to on the cobbled street. From the parlour table, the one Emily and her sisters worked at, you can still look out at the graveyard with its overcrowded, flat-lying gravestones. (Octavia Lillywhite)
Before dinner, I would usually mindlessly watch television but instead I lay a cotton cloth on the floor and enjoy an 1897 edition of Jane Eyre lent by a colleague.I have hundreds of books but didn’t realise most paperbacks made after 1900 use adhesives and plastic laminate, unlike the good old days of animal-based glue and wheat starch paste. (Caitlin Cassidy)
In Charlotte Brontë’s novel, who does Jane Eyre marry? (James Walton)
The Everygirl recommends Gothic books to binge, including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The Brontë Sisters UK explores in her latest video What Charlotte Brontë Though Was Worth Reading.
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