Plot Summary – Tragedy strikes when Heathcliff falls in love with Catherine Earnshaw, a woman from a wealthy family in 18th-century England.

★★★  

Emerald Fennell’s work is very polarizing and I can understand why. However, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn worked for me, and while I agreed with a lot of the criticisms, my enjoyment outweighed my distaste. Yet again, Emerald Fennell has made a very entertaining film, I would be quite surprised to find anyone bored while watching it, but the things that don’t work are far more prevalent in this film than before.

The cinematography and set design are impeccable; this film has some of the most gorgeous shots I’ve seen in the last decade. A lot is asked of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and they absolutely deliver. Elordi has been leaning more and more towards being a ‘serious actor,’ and I think this may be his most nuanced performance yet. He has so many emotions that he needs to show, and to me, he was convincing at all of them. The soundtrack by Charli XCX is very effective and took me by surprise as to how well it fit into the genre.

My main criticisms of this movie are in its writing and pace. Fennell is a very provocative filmmaker, and whether you love her work or hate it, she gets a reaction out of you. However, the reaction I had to most of the audacious choices in this film was laughter. Not out of disbelief but because they strained credulity, they were vulgar or sexual for the sake of being sexual. It also fails as an act of adaptation, from the very ages and races of characters, to something far more fundamental about the source material. It is unclear about its themes, its message, and its vision.

She achieved the atmosphere and the vibe and the shock value, but she fails to achieve the heart. These characters do not feel like real people, and worse, they do not earn either your sympathy or your grace. When bad things happen to them, you are glad, cause they deserve it. I would still recommend you check this one out in theaters, because I feel like there was a lot to discuss, and if you go with a good group of people, there’s a lot of intellectual discussion to be had about various choices in this film. And on that front, as a piece of art, it succeeds despite its poor choices.