“Wuthering Heights”
[4K/digital code]
I don’t think anyone was asking for this movie, but we got it. I guess some people were excited, but the “Wuthering Heights” marketing team DEFINITELY insisted we wanted this movie. “This is it!” they told us. “The greatest love story of all time!” “It’s super horny!” “It has music by Charlie XCX!” “YOU WANT THIS!”
I wasn’t really interested in “Wuthering Heights” until the reviews came out. Everyone hated it, and everyone was, suddenly, really funny with their critiques of it. Yes, it was horny, but it was kind of grossly so. Not that being horny can’t be gross. Sure it can. But “Wuthering Heights” fetishizes gross horniness. It doesn’t distinguish the two, which is a very SPECIFIC approach to have for this movie. Also, it seems to have misunderstood the heart and soul of the book.
Now I was intrigued. I knew I was going to watch this movie, and I just HAD to do my homework and read the book. I read the book. I liked it. I didn’t love it, but I found it pretty enjoyable. It’s just about revenge, really, so that’s cool. Then I realized this movie has very little to do with the book. It’s called “Wuthering Heights” after all. You see those quotation marks? They’re there for a reason. If you were to track this movie with the book, it ends halfway. So that robs Heathcliff of most of his complexity. Also, characters are missing or made into composite characters. Narrators are missing, liberties are taken with events or are changed, or are completely missing. Certain characters are transformed into unrecognizable versions of their book form. So really, WHY call it Wuthering Heights at all? Why even use the same character names? Why not call it something else and just say “it’s influenced by Wuthering Heights”? If you love the book so much, why change SO MUCH of it?
So, this isn’t Wuthering Heights, and one doesn’t necessarily need to read the source material to watch and enjoy a movie. How does “Wuthering Heights” stack up on its own?
That’s really hard to say, because it’s hard to separate my expectations from what I got. Essentially, “Wuthering Heights” the movie is just about two people who are SUPER horny teenagers for each other and let that lust basically destroy everything and everyone around them. Intellectually, they’re children, and honestly, that’s not very interesting. Sure, I have to say the sets and costume designs look great. The songs are…fine. I think Emerald Fennel was trying to work through her “awakening” as a 14-year-old reading the book, and it just doesn’t translate into something we want to see in the same way as I don’t want to see a teenager work through their urges as they go through puberty. It’s all kind of a trainwreck, so my gut is telling me this is a bad movie.
Oh, and I couldn’t care less about Charlie XCX’s music. I think Nick Cave might have been a better fit, but then again, I’m glad he’s not associated with this mediocre pile of erotic fanfiction.
