Emerald Fennell’s Hyper-Sexualized ‘Wuthering Heights’ Gets Polarized Reception at First Test Screening

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    1. Heathcliff and Catherine are extremely unlikable and toxic in the book too, so at least that’s accurate.

      But we should’ve had a non-white actor starring as Heathcliff.

    2. noodlepoodledoodles on

      frankly we will not be letting cathy in if she’s up to all that. the window is staying firmly shut

    3. That sounds so gross. And not because I’m sex negative, I’m more Emerald Fennell negative.

    4. PossessionOk5313 on

      Considering another film of hers, Saltburn, she seems more interested in shock value and trending on tiktok than having an actual plot/good writing.

    5. Fearless_Remove74 on

      She wants to be Ken Russell so bad but she just doesn’t have the sauce (hell, half the time Ken didn’t even have the sauce, I despise ‘Lisztomania’) and it’s just embarrassing now. 

    6. befuddled_humbug on

      I think it’s clear by now that nobody is interested in her ‘reinterpretation’.

    7. The thing that bugs me with Fennell is that all the “shock” stuff she puts in never feels organic. It’s always giving, “I just realized there is no actual substance here, so HAVE SOME GROTESQUE EROTIC STUFF, that’s ART, right?” I actually enjoyed Saltburn for what it was, and like any good former humanities major can see making a case for the bathtub/red wings scenes reinforcing the idea of the family being “consumed” by Oliver, but again, that’s, like, a Sophomore-level essay I’d get a B- on, lol. It’s shock for shock’s sake because she doesn’t actually have anything interesting to say.

    8. GoodbyeTobyseeya1 on

      Um excuse me, but “4 major adaptations” is excluding the glorious MTV adaptation in the early 00s! I remember being a teen thinking it was so deep; I’m sure it’s awful now but I’d still rather watch it than this.

    9. SalamanderThin636 on

      It’s such a brilliant novel and it’s never really been adapted properly. Too bad.

    10. JessCHistory on

      I could say many things so I’m choosing to be puzzled by the appearance of a nun in late 18th century Yorkshire. She’s quite lost. 

    11. Kidgorgeoushere on

      Sorry but I think she’s a hack. She’s only had these opportunities because she’s obscenely posh.

    12. Business-Salad-1864 on

      After “Promising Young Woman” I was so ready to adore everything she ever touched. But Saltburn was the cinematic equivalent of a something made by a shock/prank youtuber. And yeah, not holding out hope for this one , and normally I’d keep an open mind about a nun beating off a corpse.

    13. Less_Effect_9082 on

      Unpopular opinion: I really enjoyed Saltburn and was fine with the shock value and weirdness of it all. And I thought Promising Young Woman was an intriguing idea with sloppy execution. But this?! It sounds like those stories of AI getting fed so much slop it goes rogue and spits out something completely insane. I’ll admit I’m uncultured and haven’t read Wuthering Heights…this isn’t inspiring me to start.

    14. Puzzleheaded_Spell16 on

      Why couldn’t she have just made her own original film with all that in the same setting instead of butchering this book

    15. Oh my god, this shit sounds so aggressively “subversive” and I know it will add up to nothing. I don’t mind explicit content in film- absolutely love Walerian Borowczyk’s THE BEAST, which features the titular beast ejaculating like six gallons of semen in the movie’s climax- but it feels like Fennell is working so hard to include aberrant sexual material just because she can, and she doesn’t have the writing or the visual skills to be a true l’enfant terrible. She Lars von Tried.

    16. youreaanadultcope on

      Reminds me of that ‘artist’ that Karl Pilkington interviewed on idiot abroad who would vomit up paint onto canvases and call that their art. Shock factor is often used to cover up a lack of anything of value being said. She wants to be a filmmaker who makes an impression but ultimately has very little to say or convey so makes ‘shocking’ content to justify her input.

    17. I knew from the moment the cast was announced it would be terrible but this is egregious

    18. whatthefrockingheck on

      Look, I’m not against sex and violence in movies. I’m not even against particularly *weird* uses of sex and violence in movies—Rosemary’s Baby is a fucking masterpiece (obligatory fuck Roman Polanski, but RB is a great movie). But they have to be justified. They’ve got to serve the larger story in some way. And I just don’t see how *checks notes* a hanged man ejaculating as he dies in the opening scene in the film really does that. It just sounds kind of gross and off-putting. If I saw a movie that opened that way, I can’t say that I’d really want to watch the rest of it.

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