Wuthering Heights has ravished the global box office in its opening weekend, with the new Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie adaptation taking US$76.8m (£56m, A$108m).
Emerald Fennell’s reimagining of Emily Brontë’s novel made US$34.8m in the North American box office from 3,682 locations, making it the year’s biggest opening so far.
While this is lower than early projections of a $40m to $50m opening weekend in the US and Canada, studio Warner Bros. has projected it will reach $40m by the end of the President’s Day long weekend in the US.
Internationally, Wuthering Heights passed predictions to make US$42m in 76 territories, with more men reportedly making up audiences outside North America, where PostTrak polling estimated 76% of ticket buyers were women.
The romantic drama, starring Australians Robbie and Elordi as Catherine and Heathcliff, also performed strongly in Australia, where it made A$6.07m (US$4.3m) in its opening weekend, which Deadline attributed to the stars’ “home field advantage”.
A global total of US$82m, taking in the whole US long weekend, would mean Wuthering Heights had already recouped its reported $80m production budget in its opening weekend, not accounting for the millions spent on marketing and promotion. And the film still has several big openings on the horizon, in Japan and Vietnam on 27 February, and in China on 13 March. (Sian Cain)
But as the lights went down and an odd squeaking noise, suspiciously like bedsprings, filled the cinema, growing louder and louder, and then the first, sudden, shocking shot flashed onto the screen, Fennell had me by the scruff of the neck. It’s stylish, confident, sometimes affronting, wickedly funny but it also has a heart. I dropped a few tears at the end.
I’m confused by the overall negative response. The film is of course not faithful in all respects to Emily Brontë’s novel, which would anyhow be a weird standard to apply to any adaptation — the word itself implies change. The business of taking something born of one era and making it appeal to another inevitably involves change — how boring if it didn’t. Also, as any of the noble 10,000 who recently bought and hopefully read a copy could tell you, Wuthering Heights is not a book you want to be entirely faithful to. It’s a wild work of imaginative invention but it’s also ludicrous, repetitive and, for the final 200 pages, a slog. Fennell’s film, which like several adaptations before it has done away with the dreary second half, is largely better for its alterations. [...]
Fennell is not a filmmaker interested in muddy Yorkshire realism but her bloody-red, swirling silks and surreal sequences are a different approach to truth. When Cathy’s father — a delightfully menacing Martin Clunes — dies, we see his body flanked by two vast, tottering towers of empty green glass gin bottles. It’s not a shot to read literally but a witty, efficient way of reminding us that this was a man who has poisoned himself to death.
It’s not a perfect film, but there is so much to like about it: the two child actors, Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper, playing Cathy and Heathcliff, best friends who survive together through a brutal childhood, who yanked at my heartstrings from the start with their sweetness and their fear. Then the lovely, bickering patter of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, sexually obsessed with each other, one exasperating, one exasperated.
“I am Heathcliff!” says Cathy in the novel. “He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” Obsession is the dark spirit of Emily Brontë’s novel and Emerald Fennell has trapped it on-screen.
Some people won't admit defeat. After repeating the same old things about Heathcliff being miscast, this contributor to
The Baker Orange claims that she was moved by the film, but it's because she knew what it was all about, not because of the film itself.
Visually, though, this film is just stunning. The cinematography was beautiful. The scenery was all very visually appealing. Almost distractingly so. It all looks expensive and tasteful, which is exactly the wrong approach for a story that should feel hostile and ugly.
To be clear: adaptations don’t owe us complete fidelity. However, this feels less like a reinterpretation and more like a complete misreading. It felt like someone fell in love with the aesthetic of a doomed romance and completely ignored the racial and class violence that made it doomed in the first place. The irony is that a realistic adaptation of Wuthering Heights would probably be widely hated. It would be uglier. Less romantic. There will be audiences who adore this version for its star power and overall vibe. That’s fair. As a standalone tragic romance, it works. But as an adaptation of one of the most brutal novels of our time, it falls flat.
And despite all of this, I cried harder at the end of this movie than any movie I have ever seen. And I believe it’s because I carried the context of the story with me into the theater. I knew what these characters were supposed to mean. I can think that the adaptation is a misread, and still admit that it moved me. Maybe that says less about the film and more about how this powerful story has withstood the test of time. (Meg Qualls)
For
Trill it's a disastrous adaptation.
Even on its own merits, this movie is a complete disaster. The directing is confident, as we’ve come to expect from Fennell, but the screenplay is heavy-handed and dry. The movie is genuinely a slog to get through, especially when Heathcliff is off-screen. Heathcliff is the only character who really engaged me, despite being a neutered version of his book counterpart.
A lot of this movie’s selling points actually end up hindering the movie. Margot Robbie is undoubtedly a great actress, but in this film, she is terribly miscast and as a result gives a bizarre performance. Charli XCX is one of my favorite musicians, but her original songs for this movie actively hinder the scenes they are in. This movie clearly has talent behind it, but in execution nothing works.
The one redeeming quality here is the cinematography. Linus Sandgren was cinematographer on La La Land, Saltburn, and Babylon. In this movie, he does a lot of really interesting things with the camera. The use of color is also incredible; it looks stunning in so many shots. It really compliments the already stunning set and production design.
“Wuthering Heights” already does not represent the time period very well at all, so I wish it committed more to the exaggerated realism its clearly going for. Better yet, I wish this film did anything interesting with the time period at all, like it is trying to do. It’s clear that this movie, even if it had been wildly inaccurate to the source material, could have been half decent. Instead, it fails as both an adaptation and as a film of its own. (Brayden Caldwell)
The beauty of the film alone was enough to make me enjoy it and tolerate the poor writing, but visuals can only get you so far. The story is just as crucial, and here it didn’t meet the mark. (Justin Mehlbrech)
“Wuthering Heights” is a wannabe “Romeo and Juliet” that is simply not an adaptation of its source material, aside from the names Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff slapped onto its leads. Not only that, but it also fails to be a compelling romance, whose actors tend to putter around beautiful sets with very little to do. When they are doing things, it’s not even that interesting. It’s a failure on all levels of cinema, and the only enjoyment I could find out of going to the cinema to see it was the popcorn and snacks I had while watching it. (Marguerite C. J. Marley)
Entre una telenovela turca, un culebrón latino, una novela rosa-erótica con escocés macizo de Maya Banks o una indigestión de Peter Greenaway, Yorgos Lánthimos y otros “aggiornadores” de temas históricos o literarios, la actriz, guionista, productora y directora Emerald Fenell (Una joven prometedora, Saltburn) ha reunido a Barbie y a Frankenstein o, lo que es lo mismo, a Margot Robbie y Jacob Elordi (que ya trabajó con ella en Saltburn), dos de los más poderosos y taquilleros sex-symbols actuales, en esta reinterpretación de la obra maestra de Emily Brontë escrita y dirigida por ella. [...]
Este es el camino que Emerald Fenell ha pretendido tomar, exprimiendo de la novela todo su potencial de pasión devastadora y exasperada. Pero su película es puro plástico videoclipero (uso de las canciones de Charli XCX) tan caro como hortera, con mucho cuerpazo y sexo, pero poco erotismo (las metáforas gastro-sexuales son penosas), un diseño de producción de Suzie Davis (Mr. Turner, Cónclave) y un vestuario de su habitual colaboradora Jacqueline Durran (La bella y la bestia, Barbie) que incurren más en la forzada extravagancia de un barroco-pop de pega con un cierto tufo de princesas Disney que en la originalidad visual que se pretende crear.
La extravagancia caprichosa, la modernidad impostada y la trasgresión comercialmente calculada son la marca de esta película que busca gustar epatando o epatar gustando mientras explota a conciencia los rostros y los cuerpos de una entregada Robbie y un menos convincente (como actor) Elordi, más Can Yaman o William Levy que Heathcliff. Ninguno logra hacer creer que son sus personajes. El resultado es un hueco ejercicio de interpretación a brochazos de un texto extraordinario al que se le extirpan sus muchas posibilidades de lecturas más oscuras, arrebatadas, salvajes y críticas.
Como toda traducción es también interpretación, además de las versiones de Wyler y Buñuel, recomiendo a quien no la haya leído la extraordinaria traducción de Carmen Martín Gaite (Alba Editorial) que hace sentir lo que Virginia Woolf escribió sobre
Cumbres borrascosas: “Con un par de pinceladas Emily Brontë podía conseguir retratar el espíritu de una cara de modo que no precisara cuerpo; al hablar del páramo conseguía hacer que el viento soplara y el trueno rugiera”. En esta película hay cuerpos, casi es lo único que hay, pero no caracteres. Y no se oye, por mucho ruido que los efectos y la banda sonora metan, oír ni el viento ni el trueno. El problema no es la libertad con la que un texto se reinterprete, sino que se tunee reduciéndolo a telenovela.
(Carlos Colón) (Translation)
Esto enfrenta al espectador a cierta incomodidad, también impulsada por la banda sonora compuesta por Charli XCX, que incluye 12 canciones originales, cuyo estilo introduce un contrapunto irónico, subrayando la tensión entre lo sublime y lo vulgar.
Cumbres Borrascosas mantiene viva la confrontación y el debate en la relación entre Catherine y Heathcliff, que despliega, como en un campo de batalla, las clases sociales y las pulsiones íntimas, también limitadas, algo esperable en esta directora.
Robbie le aporta a Catherine sensaciones que oscilan entre la fragilidad y la crueldad, mientras Elordi encarna un Heathcliff menos espectral y más humano, mucho más frágil, atrapado en la contradicción entre deseo y resentimiento. La película insiste en que el amor aquí no es redentor; sino destructivo: un vínculo que corroe y arrastra hasta morir. Juzguen ustedes.
(Daniel Rojas Chía) (Translation)
A columnist from
Mamamia says that she loved the film but walked out feeling uneasy.
It's a complicated feeling to love a film's "look" while feeling like it's fundamentally re-writing the very characters that give the story its weight and it begs the question: why is our modern lens so obsessed with hypersexualising female pain?
By turning Isabella's trauma into a consensual, BDSM-coded transactional relationship, we've traded her actual human resilience for a hollow, edgy trope.
We don't need these women to be hyper-competent or hypersexual to be interesting; we just need them to be allowed the messy, un-sexy humanity Emily Brontë actually gave them. (Madison Scott)
Russh has an article on 'Why Alison Oliver is the one to watch in ‘
Wuthering Heights’'. According to
SlashFilm, the 'The Best
Wuthering Heights Adaptation You've Never Seen' is the music video of
It's All Coming Back To Me Now.
The Telegraph has an article on 'How Heathcliff the musical became a runaway hit'.
A contributor to
USA Today reports on a
Wuthering Heights watch party.
Esquire thinks that 'You Should Really, Really Take a Date to
Wuthering Heights'.
In the case of Wuthering Heights, the album sometimes feels as if Charli committed fully to her concept, but didn’t allow herself to branch out even further, reach higher, express – or even abandon – more. It is a symphony, but not quite an opus. Yet as it stands, this might actually be her most successful album: re-imagining herself as bravely as she has many times, but shedding the fur coat. And in that, this is likely a more valid, lasting and, surprisingly, necessary adaptation than Fennell could have managed. (John Wohlmacher)
Charli was tasked with creating work that fits both a time-honored novel and a flawed film adaptation; “Wuthering Heights” straddles the two remarkably well. Despite the general perception of the film thus far, Charli’s album is absolutely worth a listen. (Alexander Hernandez Gonzalez and Eliza Martin)
Fa gairebé 50 anys, Kate Bush es va inspirar en Wuthering heights (i el seu acte final) en una cançó d’halo sobrenatural, i ara és Charlie XCX qui aconsegueix interpretar l’angoixa anímica del relat de Brontë en una bonica obra inquietant. Un àlbum amb entitat pròpia, al marge del seu rol de score, on aquest anhel de l’amor impossible i punyent flota fins al final (i més enllà). (Jordi Bianciotto) (Translation)
Collider lists '10 Period Romances Like
'Wuthering Heights' That Need To Be Adapted Next', including
'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' by Anne Brontë
The Brontë novel that feels shockingly most modern didn't originate from Emily or Charlotte, but the youngest sister, Anne. Her heroine, Helen Graham, is a woman fleeing a disastrous marriage and facing social exile because of that choice. She arrives at Wildfell Hall with her young son and a cloud of suspicion trailing her.
Like her older sister's work, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is about control, reputation, and survival, but from the perspective of someone determined not to be destroyed by love. And it deserves a film adaptation that treats Helen as the quietly radical figure she is, choosing autonomy over love, independence over conformity, Realism over Romanticism. This one's for the Moor-loving feminists, you guys. (Jessica Toomer)
Feminism India discusses 'What Charlotte Brontë’s ‘
Villette’ Can Teach Us About Women, Independence, And Refusing To Settle'.
Lucy becomes an independent headmistress of her own school, similar to Madame Beck, further emphasising the unconventionality of such a story. In an era that continues to be dictated by the interests of patriarchal value systems, forcing women to navigate impossible expectations, Lucy Snowe’s rejection of romantic fulfilment and an acceptance of a life built on her own terms reminds the readers of the value in living a truly unapologetic life despite its uncertainties and fears. Nearly two centuries later, her quiet rebellion in Villette feels more urgent than ever. (Anoushka Chaudhary)
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