{"id":287536,"date":"2026-02-12T12:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T12:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/287536\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T12:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T12:44:10","slug":"a-wuthering-heights-adaptation-as-shallow-as-a-puddle-glittering-in-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/287536\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018Wuthering Heights\u2019 adaptation as shallow as a puddle glittering in the sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n To stand even a chance at enjoying Emerald Fennell\u2019s \u201cWuthering Heights,\u201d you must let it wash over you. Every split egg yolk, every inch of snail mucus, every glistening raindrop on screen \u2014 it\u2019s all designed to sit slickly on the surface, never going more than skin deep.\n <\/p>\n

\n The British writer and director\u2019s third film, to be released Friday, has polarized audiences since the first trailer. Like most of the directors who have attempted to bring author Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s wild English moors to screen, Fennell decided to adapt only the first half of the gothic novel: cutting it off at the knees before the romance sours into a study of generational trauma. Fennell\u2019s version has probably 50% less plot line and characters, but 100% more fingers thrust in mouths, masturbation scenes and sex.\n <\/p>\n

\n In some ways it was set up to fail from the moment those infamous quotation marks around the title were revealed; an attempt by Fennell to get ahead of the very criticisms that have been published this week. \u201cI can\u2019t say I\u2019m making Wuthering Heights, it\u2019s not possible,\u201d the director said during the movie\u2019s extensive press tour<\/a>. \u201cWhat I can say is I\u2019m making a version of it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Those quotation marks didn\u2019t just signal subjectivity, they were a reference in themselves. In the mid-20th century, film titles regularly appeared in trailers encased in quotation marks \u2014 either to differentiate the name of the movie inside a text-crowded poster, or as a stylistic hangover from the silent film era. This cinematic standard had largely fallen away by the 1960s, but in reviving it Fennell was indicating to audiences that her film has more to do with cinematic history than it does with the Bront\u00eb parsonage.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n In fact, director William Wyler\u2019s 1939 Hollywood adaptation \u2014 with its ostentatious outfits and romantic focus \u2014 feels like a better companion piece than the original literary source material. For the 2026 reimagining, Fennell worked with costume designer Jacqueline Durran to create dozens of costumes (Cathy alone, played by Margot Robbie, had 50) that were heavily inspired by the extravagant, unselfconscious and campy outfits of the mid-century. While making the film, Fennell passed around a book inches-thick with visual references that spanned Scarlett O\u2019Hara in \u201cGone with the Wind\u201d (1939) to \u201cDonkey Skin\u201d (1970). If it wasn\u2019t already obvious, period accuracy is a concept Fennell simply does not buy into. Period.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe all think we\u2019re making a period drama to a point, and then it just looks like the \u201890s or whenever it was made,\u201d she said, speaking alongside Durran at a Q&A session at London\u2019s Victoria and Albert Museum recently. \u201cWe are making costumes. We\u2019re making a film. That\u2019s a suspension of disbelief that is important to acknowledge.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"Fennell<\/p>\n

\n Cathy\u2019s costumes in Fennell\u2019s film veer into Wyler territory often: she teases fellow character Isabella Linton about her doomed crush on Heathcliff in the Thrushcross Grange manor, while wearing a white tulle frock with velvet appliqu\u00e9 vines that looks strikingly similar to a dress actress Merle Oberon wore on-screen in 1939. Then there is the blood-red, velvet hooded cape and white fur hand-warmer Robbie wears when Cathy visits Wuthering Heights for the first time since marrying Edgar Linton. Oberon, too, donned a velvet, fur-trimmed hood and fur handwarmer in Wyler\u2019s version. The number of jewels adorned on Robbie don\u2019t look as out of place when you see Oberon wearing a near-identical tiara, drop earrings and floral diamond necklace some 87 years earlier.\n <\/p>\n

\"Merle<\/p>\n

\"Fennell<\/p>\n

\"Both<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhen I\u2019m asked about why the costumes are a particular way, I find that really difficult to answer,\u201d designer Durran said in London. \u201cIt\u2019s a kind of instinctive, emotional reason.\u201d Fennell agreed: \u201cIt\u2019s not connected to the period, it\u2019s connected to the emotional truth.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Early reviews<\/a> of Wyler\u2019s version recognized the same sensibility. In 1939, The New York Times film critic Frank S. Nugent praised the movie for being \u201cemotional in presentation, subject and appeal,\u201d though even last century the fear of offending \u201cthe faithful of the Bronte societies\u201d loomed large. In Nugent\u2019s mind, any creative liberties taken by Wyler maintained, what he saw, as the novel\u2019s central theme: the brutal love between Heathcliff and Cathy. \u201cWhat they have done in brief is trim the unessentials and bring the essentials into clearer, sharper focus,\u201d he wrote. No doubt Fennell would welcome a review such as Nugent\u2019s today. Whether audiences engage with her adaptation in a similar spirit remains to be seen.\n <\/p>\n

\n Ultimately, Fennell is referencing a period in history, just not 1847, when Bront\u00eb wrote the novel, and not the late 1700s, when it is set. By choosing her references from the big screen rather than history, she\u2019s made a film for cinephiles, not the bookworms. The result might be as shallow as a puddle on a sunny day \u2014 but it certainly caught the light.\n <\/p>\n

\n (\u201cWuthering Heights\u201d is distributed by Warner Bros., which is owned by CNN\u2019s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.)\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To stand even a chance at enjoying Emerald Fennell\u2019s \u201cWuthering Heights,\u201d you must let it wash over you.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-287536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}