#wuthering-heights

#wuthering-heights

When a woman directs boldly, it's trashy. When a man does, it's visionary

Emerald Fennell's controversial adaptation of Wuthering Heights only crashed into cinemas this week but it's already a firm frontrunner for most divisive film of the year. The bodice-ripping blockbuster has split critics, cinema-goers and even the Independent's Culture Desk with its raunchy deviations from Emily Brontë's classic novel, 'whitewashed' casting and "pantomime-esque" performances from its leads. However, Fennell's take on Wuthering Heights has sparked the biggest divide within the global community of Brontë superfans - some of whom refuse to even watch the film.

"On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb," so wrote Emily Brontë. In a story studded with untameable lust, unbreakable love, fierce tempers and shocking acts of revenge, perhaps the most faithful aspect of Emerald Fennell's latest film, "Wuthering Heights", to its 1847 novel is the tempestuous depiction of the remote English countryside. The Yorkshire moors, to be exact.

Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Emily Brontë's beloved novel has been driving people mad since the project was first announced. Now, you can see it for yourself. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi play Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, two young adults ( their ages are questionable here) with a deeply destructive obsession with each other that only spirals further when the Lintons (Shazad Latif and a scene-stealing Alison Oliver) move in at Thrushcross Grange across from the Earnshaws at Wuthering Heights.

It's on the Leaving Cert syllabus so many students will be keen to see the latest adaptation Is Wuthering Heights suitable for teenagers? The film carries a 15A cert, so yes, technically, it is. But lots of things that are 15A - even those specifically aimed at teenagers like Emily in Paris - have a lot of sometimes quite graphic sex. Does that make them inappropriate?

Set in Yorkshire, Emily Bronte's tempestuous novel opens with Mr Lockwood, the new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, visiting his sullen landlord, Heathcliff, at his remote farmhouse where he gets snowed in. Bedding down for the night, he stumbles upon the diaries of the late Catherine Earnshaw, who writes of her love for Heathcliff, an orphan brought by her father to live with the family. Later Mr Lockwood has a nightmare in which the ghost of Catherine begs to be let in through the window

"Hurlevent": Is that like when you watch 28 Years Later? Is it some kind of French adjective that's like, "This movie is so emotional you'll cry until you yak"? Even so, why would the cast and crew of the film take photos in front of a random word and not, say, the title of the film? These questions, while well-intentioned, proved very stupid:

The production has received backlash for the casting of Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, with critics calling for a Black actor to play the latter character, described in the book as having dark hair, dark eyes and dark skin. Fennell explained her decisions, recalling the moment she wanted to scream when she saw Elordi with sideburns on the Saltburn set, as he reminded her of Dirk Bogarde and looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read.