In the opening scene of Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” adapted from Emily Brontë’s eponymous 1894 Gothic novel, an unnamed, hooded man hangs from the gallows, slowly strangling to death when his neck fails to break. The watching villagers—as well as Fennell’s camera—gawk at his visible erection as his final muffled cries evoke moans of passion.

If any fans of Fennell’s previous film, “Saltburn,” were worried the prim, Victorian-era source material would tame the director’s famously lurid eye, those fears are immediately put to rest alongside the executed criminal.

Fennell’s vibes-based adaptation incorporates much of the text, but forgoes subtext—subtlety is seemingly not one of the instruments in her artist’s toolbox. Nothing is implied, nothing goes unsaid. If a character is ever failing to outright state what they are feeling, Charli XCX will step in with an original song and croon lyrics that tell the audience what is going through their heads.

That is not to say there’s no art to be found in Fennell’s version of the story—while the writing is undeniably shallow, the visual aspect is spectacular. Roger Ebert wrote in his 1967 review of “Elvira Madigan” that “almost every frame would make a painting,” and that is certainly the case with “Wuthering Heights.” Bright colors, stark contrasts and abstract imagery abound. The film occasionally breaks into montages that evoke the feeling of a music video inspired by classic romance novel covers (perhaps not accidentally, as Fennell herself admitted Jacob Elordi’s casting was based on the picture of Heathcliff from her childhood copy of Brontë’s book).

Adaptation

Warning: Spoilers here on out for both the novel and film

The film adapts roughly the first half of Brontë’s novel, telling the story of the doomed love between Catherine (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Elordi). In both versions, Heathcliff is adopted as a young boy by Catherine’s father, Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes), and he and Catherine grow up together in a close friendship that develops into mutual romantic affection.

Heathcliff, as a young adult, overhears part of a conversation between Cathy and her servant, Nelly (Hong Chau), about her dilemma in having to choose between Heathcliff and Edgar (Shazad Latif), a wealthy neighbor who has offered her marriage, and, believing himself spurned, flees town before she can make a final decision.

It is upon Heathcliff’s return years later, with Cathy now married to Edgar, that the stories of the novel and film stray further apart.

In Brontë’s book, the now-wealthy Heathcliff is cast as a villain in the vein of the “Count of Monte Cristo,” intent on either winning Cathy for himself or destroying everyone she loves in revenge. Having been denied the former, he dedicates his life to the latter, following a path of multi-generational abuse that ultimately leads him to madness and a lonely death.

Fennell’s version acts as a sort of wish fulfillment for readers who picked up Brontë’s book expecting a more conventional romantic tragedy. Heathcliff and Cathy (who at this point knows she is pregnant with Edgar’s child), embark on a doomed sexual affair, filled with the brand of shocking, “Saltburn”-esque eroticism that caused some viewers at my screening to involuntarily vocalize disgust—the sort of thing BookTok reviewers euphemistically refer to as “spice.”

The tragedy of Emily Brontë’s story is one of unrealized passions becoming destructive obsessions, of a yearning so powerful that it causes two people to destroy themselves and the lives of everyone around them. Fennell’s version acts as more of a “what if” than a direct adaptation, choosing to instead explore the more familiar romantic trope of a love lost, and the devastation that follows.

Of the two leads, Heathcliff’s character is the most radically transformed with his sharper edges rounded to make for a more appealing romantic lead. In both versions of the story, he takes Isabella (Alison Olver)—Edgar’s sister in the book, his ward in the film—for a wife once he is rejected by Cathy. In the book, Healthcliff pretends to care for the love-struck Isabella, but in the film he is completely upfront with her, admitting that he will never love her, and their pairing is only aimed at injuring Cathy.

Whereas the book presents Heathcliff and Isabella’s relationship as explicitly one of abuse and neglect, the film posits they are involved in a BDSM-inspired consensual relationship, with Isabella a complicit and willing participant in his machinations. Book Heathcliff abuses Isabella as a means of hurting Cathy and Edgar, while film Heathcliff bargains with her as part of an increasingly desperate, and ultimately pathetic means of winning back Cathy’s attentions.

Heathcliff is ultimately denied his full transformation into a madman and a tyrant, as Cathy miscarries and dies of sepsis from the ensuing infection. She and Edgar’s daughter, the second Catherine, is never born, is never married off to Heathcliff and Isabella’s son as part of an increasingly convoluted and unhinged vengeance plan, and thus she never has the chance to break the cycle of generational trauma.

While changes to a sprawling narrative such as Brontë’s are absolutely necessary for a cinematic adaptation—indeed, Fennell is far from the first to omit the second half of the novel from her adaptation—her reinterpretation of the story replaces its more complex themes with a more shallow and conventional story of a torrid love affair gone wrong.

The bones of “Wuthering Heights” are there—the main characters are mostly recognizable, many story beats and even lines of dialogue are lifted directly from Brontë, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is less of an adaptation than a work of elaborate fanfiction using a work of classic literature as a framework for a story that is more vibes than it is substance.

Still, the film is likely to be popular with the erotic romance aficionados of BookTok, and, in this reviewer’s opinion, worth seeing for the stunning visuals and strong performances. If Emerald Fennell ever learns to use even an ounce of subtlety in her work, she might become one of the greatest filmmakers of her generation.

About the writer

Ben Hooper hails from Kalamazoo, Mich. He would like to formally apologize to Emily Brontë for thinking she was the inferior Brontë sister when he was an edgy college youth (but, to be clear, Charlotte Brontë, he still loves you). He would also like to thank Alayna Taylor for being on the receiving end of the earlier, far more annoying version of this review on the car ride home.