‘Wuthering Heights’ Is a Mad, Bad, and Sexy Romp That Makes Brontë ‘Brat’

In 2012 the New Yorker published an essay titled “Can ‘Wuthering Heights’ Work Onscreen?” The author, Joshua Rothman, reckoned that Emily Bronte’s novel from 1847 “has proven to be a trap for the artists who want to reinvent it” and recommended that “if someone approaches you and suggests that you make a film adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ don’t do it!” That counsel is ignored by the director Emerald Fennell. The result of that heedlessness is the new movie “Wuthering Heights,” starring some of the most beautiful people and clothes this side of the Yorkshire moors. Mr. Rothman reckoned that most adaptations — there have been four in the last few decades — have ignored the truth that people love “Wuthering Heights” for “its strangeness, its intensity, and its violence.” Ms. Fennell cannot be accused of shortchanging the strange. She spray paints it. Or aesthetics, for that matter. Jacob Elordi is a smoldering Heathcliff who prowls the Yorkshire moors — it’s always raining, of course — with an ever present pout and a readiness to pout. Margot Robbie is Catherine Earnshaw, played with such bottomless blue eyes and such a heaving bosom that one might think there is a wormhole somewhere to Barbieland from Wuthering Heights.The pair is doomed, but here horror looks hot. Ms. Fennell, whose previous efforts have included “Promising Young Woman” and “Saltburn,” thrives on chic carnality as well as literary license. The movie covers only the first volume of the book, and takes liberties. The quotation marks around the movie’s title are a warning that this adaptation will be Emily by way of Emerald. By streamlining the plot, the movie surfaces skin, skies, and a soapy sensibility.Ms. Robbie’s Catherine lives with an abusive and alcoholic father, played with marvelous dissipation by Martin Clunes, at their ruin of an estate, Wuthering Heights. One day he brings home a wild and orphaned boy, christened Heathcliff, who grows up with Catherine as a boon companion and soon enough, a romantic interest. The movie charts their sexual awakening with generous helpings of moaning, lingering looks, and even a horse saddle.Soon enough Catherine is drawn to Thrushcross Grange, the posh estate next door maintained by a wealthy textile magnate, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). She ends up picking Litton’s laces over Heathcliff’s lats, with tragic albeit visually ravishing results. Ms. Robbie crossing the moors in a wedding dress is astonishing, and a grotesque buffet of crustaceans conveys natura morta, the Italian phrase for still life that means “dead nature.”Ms. Robbie’s clothes become ever more fantastic as her soul withers in cossetted confinement. Ms. Fennell constructs a candy-colored prison, replete with a room where the wallpaper is a facsimile of Ms. Robbie’s skin, down to the veins snaking down her cheeks. Another room is devoted entirely to ribbons, and beats are provided by a soundtrack from the pop star Charli XCX, who brings a “Brat” burnish to all the Brontë brooding.Mr. Elordi’s Heathcliff returns a rich man — Ms. Fennell and Brontë both leave its source mysterious, prompting speculation that it could be on account of shady dealings in a far-flung corner of the Empire. What ensues is a torrid affair conducted in near plain sight, one that loops in Linton’s ward, Isabella (Alison Oliver). Her infatuation in the book is here figured as a lustful masochism that puts in sharp relief the kinky chaos unleashed by unlawful lust.Ms. Fennell, as in her previous films, is interested less in subtlety than in exegetical excess. The Linton home is a candy-colored concoction that resembles a cross between Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel and Tim Burton’s Addams Family Mansion. Ms. Robbie’s Christmas dress looks like something Little Red Ridinghood would wear if she was invited to the Met Gala. The movie — like Ms. Robbie’s outfits — is a vibe. To Ms. Fennell’s credit she resists the temptation — something the characters here rarely do — to entirely mold the 19th century to the 20th one. This isn’t “Emma” translated to “Clueless.” The movie retains the distance and weirdness — call it “strangeness” — of the original. Lines like “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” remind that behind all the pretty faces lies the language of a classic.

‘Wuthering Heights’ Is a Mad, Bad, and Sexy Romp That Makes Brontë ‘Brat’

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