When it comes to literary adaptations, generally, you can choose to be reliable or audacious. They’re not mutually exclusive, as we’ve seen many examples of well-crafted adaptations that do challenge and provoke while still being consistent, existing in dialogue with the original work. Yet, there’s nothing quite like a bad adaptation, the kind of film that lacks any real substance and purely exists so that a director can say that they crossed something off their list of projects, adding to their growing body of works without actually seemingly understanding the concept of adaptation as a whole. This is the case for Emerald Fennell, whose threats to unleash an adaptation of Wuthering Heights, perhaps the greatest love story in the history of literature, actually manifested, resulting in a film that once again shows that no one sees the world in quite the same way as Fennell, whose entire career is built on the idea of unsettling the status quo for the sole reason of showing that she can. Her version, appearing here under the hopelessly pretentious title of “Wuthering Heights” (quotation marks included) takes a few recognisable scraps of Emily Brontë’s astonishing novel and cobbles them together into something resembling a film – insofar as this is 132 minutes of video footage projected in a cinema in which actors appear to be delivering lines from a what seems to be a script. Not the first time the novel has been adapted – we’ve seen esteemed filmmakers like William Wyler, Luis Buñuel, Jacques Rivette and Andrea Arnold (how bold of Fennell to assume that she can stand toe-to-toe with such extraordinary filmmakers) explore the beautiful and tragic romance of Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff, following their years of falling in love set to the backdrop of the Yorkshire Moors, where the ebb and flow of their passionate yearning leads to some challenging circumstances for them both. Try as we might, we simply can’t deny the unconventional charm that comes with “Wuthering Heights”, a film so beautifully pretentious, wooden and outrageously deranged, we almost feel privileged to be witnessing it in real time, especially since Fennell has made it abunduntly clear that she is not at all interested in playing by the rules, which gives her version of this historically important novel a sense of spunk that we often struggle to find in many attempts to bring classic novels to life on screen.

It’s always troubling when you walk away from a film that purports to be an adaptation of a classical piece of literature and actually wonder whether or not the director had even opened their copy of the book in the first place. The fact that this was a genuine thought that crossed my head, wondering whether Fennell had actually even read the novel or if she simply built the film around the knowledge of the two main characters’ names and a quick online summary of the plot, building the script from there. In a way, we can’t blame her – many filmmakers pursue these classical adaptations, since they’re relatively easy to market based on name recognition, and truly succeeding can give a director additional layers of acclaim, which is something that we can at least appreciate in this instance. It also helps that the original novel is one of the most beloved of the era in which it was written and has remained relevant over a century later. We’re drawn to these romantic novels, since despite being written so long ago, they tend to tap into the most carnal, intense cravings, a kind of love that exists beyond the confines of modernity, and seems so much more pure and beautiful. Sadly, this is where the merits of “Wuthering Heights” begin to dissipate, since it becomes quite clear that Fennell was taking only the most surface-level themes and using them as the foundation for maybe the most shallow adaptation of the source text. She chooses to highlight the love between Heathcliff and Cathy, but very little else – class is momentarily mentioned in passing (since its unavoidable when considering Heathcliff’s ascent from uneducated orphan to wealthy landowner), but there’s nothing relating to race, culture, identity or even any particularly notable gender dynamics, with the film seemingly existing only as an attempt on the part of the director to tell her version of the story. Naturally, there is some merit in the idea of a director taking authorship of a piece of work through interpreting it along their own terms, but I don’t believe Fennell has the tact to be able to do this intentionally, with “Wuthering Heights” being a meandering mess that seems to lose every bit of context that Brontë’s novel openly discussed, leading to a film that is, at the best of times, a bit of an existential failure.

There were seemingly limitless possibilities for the roles of Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and with someone like Fennell at the helm, it would have been very possible to cast actors who may not be as well-known, but would get the exposure through such a collaboration. For whatever reason, the director goes in the complete opposite direction that we’d expect, doing some of the most abysmal casting we’ve seen in years, to the point where we have to wonder whether or not it was intentional. The problem is that neither of the two leads (or any of the supporting players) is anything less than excellent in terms of their performances, but rather that they fail to fit these roles in any logical way. Margot Robbie is someone who needs no introduction, since her body of work speaks for itself – someone who has constantly pushed herself and become one of the most magnetic actors working today. She’s done more than enough to prove her skills. She is also partially responsible for Fennell having this platform, since it was Robbie’s production company that helped finance her debut, creating a close personal relationship between the two artists (and where we wonder whether the choice to cast Robbie in the role had something to do with their connection), and which clearly created a kinship. Jacob Elordi also has a working relationship with the director, having one of his breakthrough performances in Saltburn, which was the moment many of us realised he is to be taken seriously as an actor after years of work that didn’t quite showcase his talents. Robbie and Elordi are good, but these are performances that anyone could play, and considering they’re both poor fits for the material, it doesn’t quite make sense. Needless to say, Robbie and Elordi do what they can, but it’s simply a case of taking two wildly popular actors and throwing them into a film where they can just coast off their personas rather than actually extending themselves as performers, which doesn’t invalidate the film, but does prove to be one of its many lazier aspects. The only people who are actually doing something meaningful are the supporting players, with Hong Chau, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes (who is playing Mr Earnshaw with a grotesque approach that we can only admire) and Shazad Latif, who deliver strong work that is unfortunately eclipsed by the two leads, who take the lion’s share of attention.

Something that we do discover if we look at Fennell’s work is that, divorcing her usually questionable writing and approach to narrative structure, she is a skilled director in terms of visual style. This is quite frustrating, because while the script for “Wuthering Heights” is a meandering failure in every way, the film is exceptionally well-crafted, a stunning piece of cinema that makes extraordinary use of the filming locations, underlining the stunning beauty of what is supposed to represent the Yorkshire Moors, to the point where we can at least be witness to something visually quite arresting. Fennell is evidently inspired by the lush design of classic period films and melodramas produced during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and while she may be far from as skillful as the likes of Douglas Sirk or Powell and Pressburger, she does have a keen eye for detail, to the point where we have to wonder whether the reason the screenplay was so poorly put together is because it was essentially an after-thought, a means to mount a production in which the aesthetic was more important than anything else. I usually tend to avoid hinging an argument on the common belief that some directors embody style over substance (since they’re not mutually exclusive and many fantastic filmmakers can to do both), but Fennell has proven that it is exceptionally easy to squander all the potential of a project like this by focusing less on the story and more on the visuals, which are simply not enough to sustain the weight of this film. It also doesn’t help that, based on the story we do get, we are never aware of whether this is supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek satire, or something to be taken entirely seriously – and unfortunately, Fennell is not the kind of director who lends herself to such intentional ambiguity, with the entirety of this film being a poorly-crafted attempt at honouring the source material, but rather than being capable of capturing the raw energy of the novel, it instead settles to becoming an outrageous and overlong chore of a film that is filled with unintentionally hilarious moments and some of the most questionable narrative decisions we’ve seen in quite some time.

Perhaps the most appropriate description for “Wuthering Heights” is not as a film, since this places too much burden on it to actually be coherent. Instead, this is an object, a series of images moving at 24 frames per second in which a director who is known for taking bold swings decides to throw caution to the wind, making a piece of art that will come to define her, for better or worse. We should have known this project was doomed from the moment it was announced, with every subsequent announcement and glimpse into the filmmaking process only causing the anxiety to compound: casting two Australian actors in this quintessential love story, one nearly two decades older than the character she is playing, the other being entirely removed from the ethnic origins of his character, with music by Charli XCX (which is objectively fun, but adds very little to the film) and featuring some questionable directorial choices that prove that Fennell is a filmmaker who peddles in a kind of repulsive maximalism you either are going to appreciate or find woefully tacky, depending on how much the ideas embedded in this film work for each viewer. For “Wuthering Heights” is not going to derail Fennell’s career – if anything, it just consolidates her tendency towards excess, especially in an era where we’re finding maximalism is gradually making a comeback. However, it does mean that the director will be constantly be the subject of some scrutiny, since she’s essentially confirmed herself as someone who adopts a more laissez-faire approach to filmmaking, disregarding logic and just making the films she deems most interesting to her personal ambitions, which is respectable, even if we may not agree with the execution or intentions that appear alongside. Essentially two hours of poorly-written fan fiction cobbled together to look visually arresting, “Wuthering Heights” is an oddity – but even at its worst, it is at least entertaining enough to hold our attention, with strange directorial decisions, laughable writing and many tonal choices that frankly feel insulting, Fennell has made a film that is a ferocious assault on the senses and a violation of the viewer’s sanity – and for that reason alone, makes it entirely unforgettable, for better or worse.