"There is a two-minute section at the midpoint of'Wuthering Heights' that had me briefly convinced I was watching the greatest movie ever made. We watch as Margot Robbie's Cathy wears Elton John's sunglasses, paws at flesh-coloured walls, and skips and jumps around an eerily manicured garden straight out of Monty Don's erotic nightmares. Charli xcx wails on the soundtrack, swaddled in reverb and metallic strings."
"Granted, Charli could probably belch in a soundbooth and I'd call it a banger, but still: gosh, I thought, this is cinema. But then the song ended, and Robbie - bored, randy and now for some reason dressed like Whitney Houston in 1988 - sat on some eggs and stuck her index finger into the mouth of a jellied fish."
A two-minute midpoint sequence centers Margot Robbie's Cathy in flamboyant visuals: Elton John sunglasses, flesh-coloured walls, manicured garden and a Charli XCX soundtrack swaddled in reverb and metallic strings. The sequence briefly convinces the viewer of cinematic greatness before descending into bizarre imagery—Robbie dressed like Whitney Houston, sitting on eggs and inserting a finger into a jellied fish—that breaks the illusion. Emerald Fennell's films provoke intense debate, with Promising Young Woman (2020) polarizing critics over its revenge themes, and her 2023 follow-up riffing on The Talented Mr Ripley. Wuthering Heights provoked pre-release worry and backlash, gutted the novel's complexity, and substantially lightened the likely non-white Heathcliff's racial presentation.
Read at The Independent
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