Wuthering Heights

Some context, or rather, a lack thereof.

I went into this knowing exactly nothing about the story. All I knew about this movie was that Emerald Fennell made it, who the two leads were, and that people were annoyed because she made Jacob Elordi's character white when he was not white in the book.

That's what I knew. I liked Emerald's last movie, Saltburn. It was trashy, yes, but I appreciated that she had the audacity to invite us into her particular flavor of sexuality and debauchery. Saltburn was all about how awful rich people are and how they just treat everyone like crap and basically are horrible, horny monsters.

Wuthering Heights is about a terrible rich person named Cathy who is in love with the servant boy her father adopted, and she is maybe a psychopath? And then there's a whole lot of yearning. A lot of sexy times, some tragedy, and a lot of weird, horny stuff. It is essentially the same vibe as Saltburn, but much more moody and dramatic. Everything was very dramatic. I suppose that's the genre.

As for the racial issue with Heathcliff, I can really appreciate both perspectives. Even without having read the book, it still makes a lot more sense in the story, as I understand it from this movie, for him to be black. Like, his being black would have probably been a lot more interesting, but also more challenging, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

THAT said, the story that Emerald seemed to want to tell would have been much more difficult to tell with a black actor, just because of the connotations that would have to be considered, given the class commentary being made. I don't want to get into the specifics of the second half of the story, but portraying it with a black actor and a white leading lady would have been a different version of the story than the one she apparently needed to tell. So, while I wouldn't have had the stones to cast that character as anything other than non-white (Dev Patel would have been incredible in that role), I do respect her for telling the story she wanted to tell. For whatever fucking reason that was.

I mean, let's talk about how Emerald comes from money. She's writing and directing movies about people she probably knew in some capacity. She's writing them in a not particularly flattering way, and I dig it. I think she's taking big swings, and while I wasn't overly fond of her first film, Promising Young Woman, I thought Saltburn did a really good job of being alarmingly horny and nasty, in a way that felt honest, if a little slimy and gross.

Wuthering Heights was pretty good. It's not really my KIND of movie, generally. Period pieces about wealthy socialites yearning intensely and "We mustn't..."ing is not really my vibe, but I did enjoy this movie for what it was. It was a somewhat uncomfortable movie to watch about terrible people doing terrible things to each other. All of the actors were fine. Jacob Elrodi continues to impress with his intensity. Emerald Fennell has a lovely eye for compelling images, and I will continue to watch her movies.

I hope the next one is a little more upbeat, maybe, but whatever, you do you, Emerald.