by: Claudia Casal
People Editor

Contains Spoilers

Director Emerald Fennell’s latest project, “Wuthering Heights”, falls short of the “greatest love story of all time”. Based on the classic book of the same name by Emily Brontë, the film follows Catherine Earnshaw and her foster brother, Heathcliff, as they grow up abused by Catherine’s father and are unable to fully love each other due to economic circumstances. As someone who read the novel before watching the movie, I am very disappointed by Fennell’s interpretation of the novel.

Fennell’s first misstep was casting Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. The 37-year-old was chosen to play a bratty and selfish young girl who only lives to be 18 years old. While all of the characters are aged up in the film, Catherine’s personality and lack of sympathy make much more sense as a teenager rather than a woman in her twenties and thirties. Heathcliff, played by Elordi, who is notably white and Australian, is one of the only racially ambiguous people mentioned in Victorian literature and continually experiences prejudice because of this. On the other hand, Hong Chau was perfectly cast as the meddling housekeeper Nelly Dean, and even though she was intended to be the villain, I couldn’t find myself hating her.

The movie begins with Catherine and Heathcliff as children. Fennell decided to combine Hindley Earnshaw, Catherine’s abusive brother, with her father, thereby omitting Hindley from the movie entirely. These childhood scenes started the movie off strong and gave me hope for the rest of the film. Later on in the movie, Heathcliff runs away when he overhears Catherine declaring that it would degrade her to marry him and instead marrying their rich neighbor, Edgar Linton. Once reunited, Catherine and Heathcliff begin a long affair behind Edgar’s back, manifesting on screen as forty minutes of just kissing. Instead of spending a third of the movie so repetitively, Fennell could’ve spent all that time developing their relationship, or any of the other characters’ relatively flat personalities. All of the characters’ personalities and dialogues revolve around Catherine and Heathcliff’s toxic relationship.

Fennell has largely deflected criticism from audience and critics alike, stating that the move is only inspired by the novel. Fennell has chosen to cut out all of the complexities and social commentaries of the story in favor of the two characters’ romance. Even so, some of the most romantic scenes from the novel weren’t included, like Heathcliff digging up Catherine’s grave just to see her again.

With all of this said, the cinematography as well as the music done by Charli XCX were done very well. “Wuthering Heights” is a watered-down version of the source material, with pretty visuals but a superficial story.