{"id":168211,"date":"2025-09-29T13:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T13:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/168211\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T13:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T13:43:07","slug":"wuthering-heights-director-emerald-fennell-on-primal-sexual-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/168211\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Wuthering Heights’ Director Emerald Fennell on ‘Primal, Sexual’ Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEmerald Fennell<\/a> has spoken for the first time about her already controversial film adaptation of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s 1847 novel \u201cWuthering Heights<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a panel at the Bront\u00eb Women\u2019s Writing Festival in England on Friday, the \u201cSaltburn\u201d and \u201cPromising Young Woman\u201d director said she wanted the movie \u2014 starring Margot Robbie<\/a> as Cathy and Jacob Elordi<\/a> as Heathcliff \u2014 to convey how she felt reading the book for the first time as a teenager.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to make something that made me feel like I felt when I first read it, which means that it\u2019s an emotional response to something,\u201d Fennell said, according to the BBC<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s, like, primal, sexual.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first trailer for \u201cWuthering Heights,\u201d<\/a> which released earlier this month, certainly portrayed that. It features shots of bread being kneaded suggestively, sweat dripping down Elordi\u2019s back, a finger being placed in a fish\u2019s mouth and plenty of bodice-ripping, all set to a remixed version of Charli xcx\u2019s \u201cEverything Is Romantic.\u201d The teaser continued to fuel fervent debate about the film, with some calling it too erotic.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Fennell disagrees, saying: \u201cThere\u2019s an enormous amount of sadomasochism in this book. There\u2019s a reason people were deeply shocked by it [when it was published].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe added, \u201cIt\u2019s been a kind of masochistic exercise working on it because I love it so much, and it can\u2019t love me back, and I have to live with that. So it\u2019s been troubling, but I think in a really useful way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFennell said that she recognizes the \u201chuge responsibility\u201d of adapting the book, which has been brought to screen several times before, perhaps most notably with the 1992 version starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI know that if somebody else made it, I\u2019d be furious,\u201d she continued. \u201cIt\u2019s very personal material for everyone. It\u2019s very illicit. The way we relate to the characters is very private, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThough she\u2019s taken some liberties elsewhere, Fennell \u2014 who also wrote the screenplay for the film \u2014 asserted that she kept much of Bront\u00eb\u2019s original dialogue. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was really determined to preserve as much of her dialogue [as possible] because her dialogue is the best dialogue ever,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t better it, and who could?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBeyond the film\u2019s apparent eroticism, Fennell has also faced some heat for casting Robbie and Elordi. Cathy is a teenager in the book while Robbie is 35, and Heathcliff is described as being \u201cdark-skinned\u201d while Elordi is not. <\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, Fennell enthusiastically stood by her casting choices during the panel, telling the crowd she knew Elordi was her Heathcliff when she met him on the set of \u201cSaltburn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tElordi \u201clooked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read,\u201d Fennell said. \u201cAnd it was so awful because I so wanted to scream. Not the professional thing to do, obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe added, \u201cI had been thinking about making [\u2018Wuthering Heights\u2019], and it seemed to me he had the thing\u2026 he\u2019s a very surprising actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOf Robbie, the director said she is \u201cnot like anyone I\u2019ve ever met \u2014 ever \u2014 and I think that\u2019s what I felt like with Cathy,\u201d adding that the \u201cBarbie\u201d star is \u201cso beautiful and interesting and surprising, and she is the type of person who, like Cathy, could get away with anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think honestly she could commit a killing spree and nobody would mind. And that is who Cathy is to me. Cathy is somebody who just pushes to see how far she can go,\u201d Fennell continued. \u201cSo it needed somebody like Margot, who\u2019s a star, not just an incredible actress \u2014 which she is \u2014 but somebody who has a power, an otherworldly power, a Godlike power, that means people lose their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWuthering Heights\u201d releases in theaters on Feb. 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emerald Fennell has spoken for the first time about her already controversial film adaptation of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s 1847…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1823,96,1826,1827,2839,56,54,55,1829],"class_list":{"0":"post-168211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-emerald-fennell","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-jacob-elordi","11":"tag-margot-robbie","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom","16":"tag-wuthering-heights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}