How to translate arguably the most romantic book in literary history to the screen? Dozens have tried, and director Emerald Fennell is the most recent with “Wuthering Heights,” the adaptation that will be distinguished from all those others by the stylised quotation marks in its title. Of course, calling Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel “romantic” comes with its own asterisk, as much of what happens in the novel is mean and dark. The doomed romance between Catherine and Heathcliff seems to be just the stuff of which Fennell is capable, as her previous films Promising Young Woman and Saltburn had “mean and dark” oozing out of every pore.

“Wuthering Heights” feels like a paler version of those provocations. It certainly collects a pair of actors who can smoulder in the lead roles, both of them Australian, Jacob Elordi in particular having just done so in his Oscar-nominated turn as the monster in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, not to mention in Fennell’s Saltburn. We know Margot Robbie is equal to that task as well, just because she’s up for any challenge when it comes to demonstrating her craft. A few explicit sexual gestures – also a Fennell trademark – combine with some wild set design and an anachronistic Charli XCX soundtrack to try to speak to a younger crowd, but they leave the film short of feeling like a new exploration of Bronte’s material.

“Wuthering Heights” begins on perhaps its most distinctive creative choice, which is to show the young Catherine Earnshaw (played at this age by Charlotte Mellington) witnessing a hanging. At first we only hear the sounds against a black background, which we are meant to mistake for prelingual grunts of passion – especially if we’ve heard the film is supposed to be a bit smutty. Instead these are the man’s last vocalisations as he strains against the noose, while the crowd, including a wild-eyed Catherine, takes perverse pleasure in the spectacle. Anthony Willis’ score crashes in ominously as the credits roll, and there’s the sense we’re in the hands of a visionary.

This scene is not from the novel, a rare case of Fennell adding something when for the most part she’s streamlined – or perhaps, disemboweled – Bronte’s narrative. And while it has questionable relevance to either the characterisation of Catherine or the rest of the plot, it does something that the rest of this film can never muster: it represents a genuinely unusual choice, rather than just outside-the-box window dressing.

Beyond this opening, the story proceeds in a similar fashion to many of the other adaptations, establishing the childhood affection between Catherine and the street urchin her drunkard father adopted and raised more or less as a son/servant. Heathcliff’s low birth has no hope of raising the Earnshaw family out of their poverty, so when Catherine grows older, she opts for a marriage proposal from Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), whose neighbouring estate on the English moors is resplendant, not a mouldering relic like the one she lives in alongside Nelly (Hong Chau), the illegitimate daughter of a lord her father has also taken in. They are all trying to keep the patriarch (Martin Clunes) on two feet, no simple task as he’s also an incorrigible gambler, causing their collective destitution.

When Heathcliff overhears Catherine saying she cannot marry him because it would bring shame on her – then misses the postscript that she loves him – he leaves home, seemingly never to return. Catherine marries the favourable match, passionless as the marriage may be, as Edgar’s sister Isabella (Alison Oliver) grows closer to her. Heathcliff does ultimately return after five years, a rich man and a gentleman, and buys Wuthering Heights from Catherine’s father – meaning to have Catherine back or to get revenge on her, or both.

Fennell does certainly mean to shock us here. There’s a BDSM scene between two servants that Catherine witnesses through the floorboards of a barn loft, and adding to it is the fact that Heathcliff, trying to prevent her from making the noise that would give away her presence, covers both her eyes and her mouth with his hands as the scene plays out. It’s just one example of the way Fennell has gotten in the sex that previous versions couldn’t show us, and she has a good eye for representing it metaphorically when she’s not representing it literally. Everything from kneaded dough to the trail of slime left by a slug on a window pane stands in for something about the physical act of sex, and these also contribute to the film’s earthy nature that’s heavy on gristle and other natural debris. Saltburn fans will recall the sort of central role bodily fluids played in that film.

These are mostly surface touches, and the question remains as to how much any of this is translating as swoony romance. Because there’s something ineffable about that, and it’s generally in the eye of the beholder, we’re left to analyse the more objective details in order to determine the film’s effect. One of these, and it’s become a talking point about “Wuthering Heights,” is that Elordi may not be as swarthy of an actor as the role of Heathcliff requires. While the novel likens him to a gypsy – a term we no longer use in polite company – Elordi’s heritage is Spanish, which may not be a significantly strong gesture in today’s climate. The casting of Chau and Latif may make up for some of that in the eyes of critics.

The other thing we can say, on a purely textual level, is that this version has done away with a whole generation of characters from the novel, leaving us to focus only on Catherine, Heathcliff, Edgar and Isabella. Because we have 136 minutes with these four – and with Nelly, who plays quite the mischievous role here – we have to go over the same story territory multiple times, with each new iteration losing impact from the previous.

The key to the power of Bronte’s novel is that these characters feel like ghosts to us, sometimes because they literally are. We can’t grasp them, and parts of them remain a mystery. Heathcliff’s (temporary) departure from the narrative feels like a step toward what we need there, but when he comes back, there’s rather too much of him.

Perhaps the quotation marks around Fennell’s title function in a way she never intended, which is that we should question how much this is actually an authentic version of what we love about the novel. Then again, when it comes to a beloved novel like Wuthering Heights, the closest you can probably ever get on screen is a dubious facsimile.

 

“Wuthering Heights” is currently playing in Australian cinemas.