Wuthering Heights, the writer-director Emerald Fennell's new adaptation of Emily Bronte's groundbreaking Gothic novel, is her best film to date'a heaving, rip-snortingly carnal good time at the cinema. It is also a gooey, grimy mess. The camera lingers on dripping egg yolks and squishy, bubbling dough; the protagonist, Cathy Earnshaw (played by Margot Robbie), must wade through pig's blood on her way to the moors near her home, leaving a trim of viscera on her gorgeously anachronistic dress. This is Fennell's aesthetic throughout: loudly stylish on top, and just as loudly nasty right below the surface. The clash of beauty and filth is well suited for Bronte's desolate tale of romance in a tempestuous climate, where Cathy is constantly caught between Victorian propriety and her baser, wilder nature. Fennell's take is thuddingly blunt; it brings the book's simmering sexual repression to a boil. Wuthering Heights, sprawling and objectively tough to capture faithfully, hinges on the...
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