The negative reception to ‘Wuthering Heights’ comes as no surprise, Emerald Fennell just wants to shock
When the announcement that Emerald Fennell, director of the controversial 2023 film Saltburn, would be tackling an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic gothic novel Wuthering Heights, people seemed divided. Unfortunately for Fennell, as more information has been revealed, anticipation for the project has teetered closer towards despair and trepidation rather than genuine excitement.
Now, with the first test screening for the film going down rather poorly, it’s clear more than ever that Fennell’s flaccid style of provocation simply doesn’t work. According to World of Reel, the movie features “hyper-sexualised imagery”, including “a public hanging that quickly descends into grotesque absurdity, as the condemned man ejaculates mid-execution, sending the onlooking crowd into a kind of orgiastic frenzy. A nun even fondles the corpse’s visible erection.”
With BDSM and stereotypically disgusting imagery, like eggs and slugs, mixing with the erotic, it seems like Fennell is desperate to make the kind of film that will get everyone talking. Saltburn was the same, and it was a mess. The psychological thriller relied on cheap shocks, like Barry Keoghan declaring himself a vampire as he initiated oral sex on a character on her period, Keoghan slurping up Jacob Elordi’s cummy bath water, or Keoghan shagging a grave.
The movie divided audiences, but for all of its undeniable stylistic beauty, the message of the film was ultimately hollow, with these seemingly depraved acts feeling inauthentic to Fennell as an artist. Auteurs like Catherine Breillat, Lars von Trier, Julia Ducournau, and John Waters, for example, have all taken provocation to controversial levels, but there is an authenticity to their work which makes their shocking creative decisions feel necessary to their art.
There is an inherent clash between the lazily provocative images that Fennell has begun to triumph in, which stands in opposition to the clean Hollywood style she also champions. Depravity needs real purpose on screen – look at Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom – but in Saltburn, these deliberately shocking acts, sprinkled throughout an otherwise flimsily-written narrative that said very little about class (despite its apparent intentions), felt like they were only there to attract controversy and get people talking.
Let’s be real, without those scenes in Saltburn, it probably wouldn’t have performed as well as it did, because many audiences were checking out the film just to see if it was as shocking as it was made out to be (it wasn’t). That’s the thing – when it feels like grotesque acts are merely there to cause an uproar, you can’t help but feel a sense of disconnection from the movie.
Judging by the decisions Fennell has made in Saltburn and now Wuthering Heights (let’s not even start on the reductive and flimsy feminism of Promising Young Woman), it seems like the filmmaker has to rely on shock factor to cover up the fact that she isn’t all that good of a writer. Her works lack depth, and no amount of Keoghan thrusting on a grave or nuns getting off on a public hanging can make up for it.
Wuthering Heights is one of the most iconic novels of all time, and it really doesn’t need disgracing in such a way by Fennell. The first mistake that the filmmaker made was casting 35-year-old Margot Robbie as Cathy, the 18-year-old protagonist, which seems completely absurd.
If this isn’t proof that Fennell is more interested in profit and internet buzz around her movies, why else would you tragically miscast your leading role with a massive Hollywood star? Paired with leaked images of shooting the film, which show Robbie in incorrect period outfits, it’s no surprise that Wuthering Heights has already received backlash after one test screening.
If you’re going to tackle such an important novel, you have to stick to the essence of the book, and the gloomy atmosphere of the Yorkshire moors, where obsession and tragedy loom, can’t be replicated through Hollywood shininess and ejaculating corpses.
