Warning: This article contains spoilers for ‘Wuthering Heights’
While it’s had people divided since the trailer dropped months ago, ‘Wuthering Heights’ is enjoying a pretty successful opening weekend.
From its X-rated to more disturbing scenes, Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë's 1847 gothic romance novel has driven the divide deeper.
Many are appalled by the Saltburn director’s take on the classic while others are absolutely eating it up – one X user says she’s seen it three times already.
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The criticisms of the film pretty much play into the stylistic choice of putting quote marks around the title – distancing it from the original material.
There’s upset over the alleged white-washing of Heathcliff (played by Jacob Elordi) and the casting of 35-year-old Margot Robbie as Catherine whose written as a teen. But Fennell is also being slammed for the portrayal of Isabella Linton (played by Alison Oliver).
In the novel, she’s the spoiled, privileged little sister of Edgar Linton, the wealthy man who ends up being Catherine’s husband.
She then ends being pretty much used and abused by Heathcliff to get back at the families.
But in the film, her character is arguably painted in a very different light and Oliver explained this to ELLE Canada.
“There are a lot of descriptions in the book about how she is infantile and ill-mannered, and can be quite like a petulant child, and obviously very romantic and spoiled," the Saltburn actor said.
“[This] Isabella is this sort of baby-woman, and she’s been kept a child by Edgar. The experience of having Cathy and Heathcliff come into her home is her stepping into a new phase of her life.”
In the novel, she is coerced into being at the hands of an abuser, miserable and lonely.
But in one scene from the film, she is found by Catherine’s handmaid to be chained up like a dog.
And rather than appearing to be suffering and hating life, she crawls up to Nelly (Honh Chau) and gives the vibe that she’s enjoying being Heathcliff’s submissive pet in this game.
However, viewers are very, very divided.
One user on X said it ‘tore to shreds what the character was supposed to be’.
“A survivor of abuse and single mother reduced to an S&M roleplay enjoyer barking on command for her husband...” they wrote as another suggested every nuance from the story ‘is reduced to fetish slop’.
“Genuinely disgusting they completely butchered everything I’m so mad,” another said.
“This is such a bad take,” a third echoed.
However, one suggested: “Despite book purists working overtime trying to dumb WH down, there are so many layers to unfold in that film - and fascinating discussions to be had - if you are willing to analyse the film with more depth and less disingenuousness, rather than only scratching the surface of it - ironically what haters accuse Fennell of doing with their beloved book.”
And Oliver added that Fennell’s interpretation of her character’s story ‘is the reverse of Cathy’s’.
“There's an uncorseting of her," the actor continued. "Like she becomes undone. There’s something so powerful about being underestimated."
Topics: Books, TV and Film, Jacob Elordi, Margot Robbie
Jess Battison