Is Jacob Elordi now type cast as a sexy beast? The new “Wuthering Heights,” as reinvented by Emerald Fennell, finds fatal attraction in its leading man Heathcliff played by Jacob Elordi, who seduced us as the Monster in “Frankenstein” this season.
Elordi should learn the old Halloween song, “Monster Mash,” because Heathcliff and Frankenstein’s invention are not far from each other.
While Guillermo del Toro found the sweet soul, the innocent child of the monster in the actor, Fennell, putting her perverse stamp on the character, plays his monstrous passion. Those eyes, smoldering yes, a veil of lashes, lush for outsized emotion. A swoon in every close-up.
In Emily Bronte’s creation, the character of Heathcliff is dark and brooding, called a monster, and brought into light by Catherine Earnshaw. Blond and blue eyed, Fennell’s child Cathy (look out for Charlotte Mellington) is simply naughty, the adult the humanized Barbie. She comes in the form of Margot Robbie bedecked in gaudy gems as opulent as her room. Cathy begins to live a false life in marriage to Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), the rich man next door.
With Heathcliff, she’s wild and open, the sex tender—even if played against the ocean, in nature, and in the rain. Being drenched is a thing. But everyone has to come in out of the elements.
Emerald Fennell is a master at exposing the claustrophobia of massive houses, and the boredom of those who live in them. See “Saltburn,” for example. Her double quote “Wuthering Heights” was a no-brainer for her talents at teasing out the untoward behavior nurtured in these vast estates.
Wanting to hurt Cathy for marrying Edgar Linton, Heathcliff marries Isabelle, Edgar’s ward. Barely a woman, she takes to Heathcliff’s brute abuse willingly, a substitute for her room full of ribbons. Mr. Earnshaw, once a man of wealth and social standing, drinks and gambles away his riches. Oh and, be wary of servants. Nelly (Hong Chau) wields her own hand at fate before Heathcliff, a dirty underling, desperate for love, turns the tables.
At its heart, “”Wuthering Heights””” is a sublime Valentine’s Day gift: Maddening love consummated. In this sick heat, someone has to die. But as we know from Elordi’s Frankenstein, death is not the worst of it. Just ask Lady Gaga’s minions. Being alone, without the other is far, far more tragic—and dark. If Bronte’s novel was influenced by the Gothic genre in her time, Fennell has defined a Gothic for ours. — with Roger Friedman
