Emerald Fennell‘s Wuthering Heights, which I sat through early last evening, is the female gaze in action. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It used to be fine to have male gaze movies until the wokeys decided that white males are fundamentally repellent. Female gaze movies are obviously more in synch with today’s swing of things. The best kind of romanticsexual films are both at once.
But Emerald Heights (not a typo) is a kind of masturbation porn for women. Overall it adopts an odd, montage-y, surface-skimming scattershot approach. Not much in the way of dramatic build or smoothly blended spirit fiction or elegant symphonic whatever. Fast-forward pacing, many short scenes, abrupt cutting — a cinematic equivalent of speed-reading.
It’s basically anti-period (i.e., anti-Bronte realism) with a standard, thoroughly-pointless-within-the-narrative diverse casting of Hong Chau and Shazad Latif. Plus the curiously gaudy and flamboyant production design is crazy. The sparkling walls and that lurid, ultra-red hallway.
I went in expecting to feel (c’mon, admit it) some form of erotic current along with a certain aching romantic sadness…the same basic heartbreak melancholy that is baked into Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel, and is ummissable within William Wyler and Gregg toland’s 1939 film version.
Fennell’s film is a sweaty, highly stylized bodice ripper for the womenfolk, and not at all for the guys. Well, somewhat but not really.
Margot Robbie goes in for the expected heavy breathing…she pouts, pants, shudders and moans, but for all the pelvic thrusting and vigorous rutting and licking and damp fingering (fingers in mouth, I mean) and rain-soaked groping, and for all the luscious erotic objectification of Jacob Elordi’s muscular, horse-like torso by Fennell and her Swedish dp, Linus Sandgren, there’s no “tits and ass” here…not visually or otherwise.
I don’t mean to sound like a dog, but Fennell is not into accommodating anything that even approaches the male gaze. Not even a slight wink in that direction. There’s not a single Bernardo Bertolucci-esque capturing of female nipples or navels or gloriously rounded hips or moist heaving tummies** in Emerald Heights, much less any discreet eyeballing of anyone’s junk or hairy thatch…not a single side-boob glimpse, and not a single apple- or pear-shaped female ass in the moonlight (or daylight for that matter). And no implied hand jobs and certainly no suggestions of sword-swallowing or any slight residue of gleaming whatever a la Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac.
Nothing, in short, for the dudes sitting by their girlfriends or wives in the seats. There’s not a single, red-blooded, hetero hard-on moment in the entire film.
Friendo: “I didn’t need Wuthering Heights to be softcore jerkoff porn. But I did want to be moved by it, and the film, while watchable, left me cold and glum.”
I also want it clearly understood that in all my decades upon this planet, I have never, ever made out with a girl in the pouring rain. I don’t think anybody has. Not even during the pouring rains of Woodstock ‘69. Has anyone ever just stood in the pouring rain without running for cover? Van Morrison did in the early ’70s, but who else?
I was thinking about the Wyler-and-Toland all through the Fennell. After arriving home around 8:30 pm and after catching the two most recent episodes of The Pitt, I went upstairs and watched portions of the 1939 film on my iPhone 15 Max Pro. It’s streaming on HBO Max.
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