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During the promotional tour for “Nosferatu” in 2024, director Robert Eggers told The Verge that he viewed the story of “Nosferatu” as a “demon lover story,” and frequently returned to one of the great demon lover stories while writing his script — Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” As he explained, “As a character, Heathcliff is an absolute bastard towards Cathy in the novel, and you’re always questioning whether he really loves her, or if he just wants to possess and destroy her.” Constantly misunderstood and continually misremembered, “Wuthering Heights” is a brutal, gothic study of class, landscape, inherited trauma, and imperial fallout, but it’s also about breaking societal expectations, the dangers of obsession, and how love really can tear us apart.
Pop culture’s insistence on distilling it down as nothing more than a “romance” misses the point so badly it borders on parody, which is why Emerald Fennell’s adaptation (and that’s pushing it) of Brontë’s novel is so perplexing. A demon lover story this film is not, even if it will undoubtedly give the box office a much-needed shock to the heart. How does a person review a movie far removed from the source material and meet it on its own terms — even if the creative motivation behind those terms are deeply problematic at best and straight-up racist at worst — especially when there’s an established history of whitewashed adaptations?
As a take on “Wuthering Heights,” Fennell’s approach to the thematically rich text leaves much to be desired, but as cinematic retelling of a 14-year-old’s fanfic interpretation of a forbidden romance — it’s breathtaking…
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