Wuthering Heights

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is, in her own words, “not a faithful adaptation.” The writer-director said she aimed to emulate a teenage girl’s feelings upon first encountering the novel’s wild passions and desires. There’s anachronistic set dressing and costuming, a synth-y soundtrack from Charli xcx, a white Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi), and narrative augmentation; plenty to get up in arms about.

I avoided as many details as I could before going into this, but I did know beforehand that the movie ends right after Cathy (Margot Robbie) dies. The original story is roughly preserved: street urchin Heathcliff is brought into the Earnshaw family’s Wuthering Heights estate, develops a close bond with Cathy, departs after her marriage to Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif) of the neighboring Thrushcross Grange, and later returns with a financial glow up. What is foregone is the romance that ensues between Cathy and Heathcliff’s respective children and the intergenerational abuses that play out. Electing to cut off the story at her death makes it narratively easier for Fennell to adapt it, and also easier to play what is a much more complicated tale as a straightforward romance.

Adaptations that redefine their source material can be genuinely great – The Haunting of Hill House, or Starship Troopers, to point to two of my favorites. The trouble is that the tragedy Fennell illustrates already exists in a multiplicity of better forms. A tortured romance set against rolling fog and dueling families? Hello, campy, angsty Twilight. There can be an argument made for creating a “Wuthering Heights” for a new generation, but not only is this not that, it is also a valueless romance of its own merits.

Perverse desire was the crux of the film’s marketing campaign, publicized on the hook of being freaky in an era where mainstream film is decidedly not. The opening scene of a public hanging turned erotic asphyxiation, and young Cathy’s (Charlotte Mellington) glee at witnessing it, makes the nexus of pleasure and pain clear – but nothing following reaches that peak.

BDSM dynamics loom over the story without visually explicit rendering. Eroticism is instead sublimated through tactile imagery: a snail inching across a window, hands kneading dough, a finger in a jellied fish’s mouth, and cracked eggs Cathy and Heathcliff use as a calling card. These moments lend brief, artistic flairs to an otherwise rote visual language, but do little to advance a nuanced portrayal of sexuality. The one point where Wuthering Heights gets desire right is an extended shot of Heathcliff catching Cathy in the attic eavesdropping on servants Joseph (Ewan Mitchell) and Zillah’s (Amy Morgan) kinky, offscreen sex. He presses his hand over her mouth to stifle a cry and her expressions cycle through indignance and desire. It’s the spark of her inexplicable attraction toward him, manifested in her furiously masturbating on the moors, but the heated emotion peters out as the plot unfolds.

Fennell’s insistence on preserving the sanctity of the central romance scours her characters of complexity. Cathy is passionate but not histrionic, Heathcliff is cold but not cruel. In one pivotal narrative change, Earnshaw caregiver Nelly Dean (Hong Chau) becomes an intentional separator of the two of them, turning her into a direct participant of the story she originally simply narrates. She absolves them of the moral burden of harm; Neither lover truly slights the other. There’s no intentionally distancing themselves without justification, or lashing out in the throes of emotion. They are not morally corrupt in any way the audience can shudder at, and feel conventional outside of their dire circumstances.

Frequent wisecracks further dull the edges of Wuthering Heights. I find them tolerable in spare inclusion, and in satires like Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, but in the filmic context of a romantic tragedy they are deeply grating. The “laugh epidemic” of rippling giggles during intense moments at the movie theater has recently been in full force; I had the distinct feeling while watching Wuthering Heights that Fennell leans into it purposefully to win over her audience. There are jokes about the incestuousness of Heathcliff and Cathy, jokes about the flesh-colored wall of Cathy’s new room when she becomes a Linton, and so, so many innuendos. Isabella Linton (Alison Oliver) – comic relief in her naivety – presents an entire book of lewd imagery to Cathy on her birthday. Fennell’s obsessiveness with defusing tension through comedy trivializes passions the film touts as its pillars.

Pithy quips take up screen-time in a lengthy story that needs every second and relies on montages to signify passing time. Even outside the frequent supercuts, the editing insistently moves from scene to scene and only lingers in rare moments of manifest desire, like in the attic. When the lovers eventually consummate their affair, the pivotal moment quickly shifts to a neatly packaged edit of their time together. Fennell makes the intentional decision to have the characters actually fuck but then avoids showing extended sex onscreen. It’s a disservice to structure a story around sexuality and then evade its depiction through a cheap storytelling device. In the era of fancams and edits, Fennell takes pleasure in catering to audiences’ shortened attention spans and faltering media literacy.

In Fennell’s original works Promising Young Woman and Saltburn – both of which I disliked, but enjoyed more than this – there’s a sureness with which Fennell guides the narrative and paints her characters, a clear conviction she holds. In Wuthering Heights, her point of view loses its strength, merely squashing a beautiful story into modern, provocative conventions and a palatable story arc.

There’s an interesting film hidden just beneath the surface, especially visible in the way that Isabella succumbs to Heathcliff’s advances and engages in puppy play. Heathcliff even bears similarity to Oliver of Saltburn in his assimilation into a family above his class – but the positioning of the story around Cathy and relegation of him to a “manic pixie dream boy” erases any chance of this being explored. Fennell was better off concocting her own romance than borrowing the setting and characters of “Wuthering Heights” to filter her own imagination through. There are much more riveting things lurking in the minds of thirteen-year-old girls than what is actually shown onscreen here.

I hope to make this partially new releases and partially rewatches/new favorites. Maybe this expands to include TV shows and music, maybe one month it’s only about one movie — either way, I would like to make this a regular occurrence. On my mind this month: Noah Baumbach’s cinematic language and how much I miss the Safdie Brothers working together. Enjoy!

Frances Ha (2012):

A mediocre New York dancer named Frances (Greta Gerwig) navigates life with a breezy, careless attitude. This is one of my absolute favorite movies; I rewatched this over and over in high school, and returning to it after three years since my last watch I’m stunned and embarrassed at how much I was trying to emulate Frances at the time (it was unsuccessful. I care too much). She has a buoyancy to her that either thrills or exasperates everyone she crosses paths with. She also definitely has ADHD (as screenwriter Greta Gerwig does). I don’t know how ‘alike’ we are now that I’m closer to her age, but I do carry the same fierce love for my friends as she does for her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner). Frances spends the film scrambling through the loss of Sophie as a roommate and the newfound trappings of adulthood, but finds her way back to a community of deep, fulfilling friendships. I feel grateful to be experiencing a similar trajectory.

I didn’t grasp the social nuances of the film as a teen and just how well it captures the rough terrain of your 20s. What’s charming at 21 turns tiresome at 27, and suddenly conversations at social gatherings shift to housing, travel, and the news. I can feel this shift impending and find myself desperate to infuse mundane whimsy into small talk — do you brush analog or electric? Do you wear patterned socks? At one point, Frances tries out an absurd greeting (and inside joke with Sophie) on a new friend — “Ahoy, sexy!” — and it falls flat. Her confidence never wavers though, unperturbed by the friction between her playful worldview and the rigid conventions of adulthood. Personally, the friction is too much for me; I fall back on talking about the latest TV show or movie and evade dreaded silence.

Frances goes from New York to Sacramento to Paris to back to her old college while trying to find a sense of direction. I love the color grading in this — black-and-white can feel arbitrary in some contemporary films, but here it brings a real cohesion to Frances’ escapades and reduces each setting to its bare bones. The fragmented scenes that make up the screenplay are also precisely written to feel both accessible and novelly humorous — like watching your best friends enact some hilarious bit that will never be seen by another person. Gerwig and her husband — director and co-writer of the film — Noah Baumbach’s wits are in full force here. It’s interesting to see how their writing has evolved to capture greater ideas, to varying degrees of success.

Jay Kelly (2025):

A very navel-gazey rumination on legacy and celebrity. My personal highlight of this is Greta Gerwig’s return to the screen as the wife of Ron Sukenik (Adam Sandler), the tired out manager of aged movie star Jay Kelly (George Clooney). Greta, we missed you!

The rest of it is middling. Major actor Jay Kelly experiences an existential crisis over his involvement with his kids and the merits of his career after he reunites with people from his past. His crisis is difficult to be sympathetic towards and its culmination at the end is, simply put, extremely corny. Baumbach’s humor that had fewer bounds in his early work is significantly reined in when satirizing Hollywood here, acting as both director and co-writer with Emily Mortimer.

However, I was enchanted by the theatrical nature of the writing and blocking and — again! — the color grading. Each scene is shot with a focus on actors’ performances, and with setting and props so sparse and intentional it is easy to imagine it replicated on a stage. Baumbach drew inspiration from the “classic feel” of the language in films from the 30s and 40s as well as the sound-stage heavy production. Adjoining sets were built so that when Jay Kelly reflects on the past, he physically steps into a different set. The extended shots on 35 mm film and tactile production are all part of Baumbach’s attempt to capture the dreamy, cinematic nature of memory. Even if the narrative leaves something to be desired, he hits the visual mark.

Marty Supreme (2025):

A crime film drawn from the same blueprint as Uncut Gems — mounting debt, sleazy protagonist, fast pace — but with much less of an impact. This kind of grindset movie just doesn’t resonate with me unless its protagonist is compelling. Timotheé Chalamet as Marty Mauser anchors the story well as a young table tennis player with explosive ambitions, but I continue to feel like every role of his is just another iteration of “Timotheé Chalamet.” I’ll cut him some slack though considering my main issue with his character was the lack of ‘getting in his head,’ where the story keeps a distance from his psyche and motivations. Fran Drescher as his mom was underutilized and she’s just unfortunately lost amid a slew of side-characters and hijinks.

Josh Safdie works wonders with a bigger budget — $60-$70 million versus $19 million for Uncut Gems — and the production design convincingly replicates the unbelievable chaos that takes Marty everywhere from a bowling alley to a cornfield (shoutout Interstellar I’m always thinking of you). But each jolt doesn’t resonate past its moment onscreen.

Richard Brody of the New Yorker observed that “it’s Benny who has been the voice of logic in their collaborations, Josh the engine of fury.” I can’t speak for Benny Safdie’s debut “The Smashing Machine” but I agree that the absence of an adhering logic from Josh Safdie’s debut leaves something to be desired. He visualizes a series of catastrophic events without any sort of consequence or meaning to them. After learning about the vampiric alternate ending of the film, I believe that there’s little more to Marty’s pursuit than thrilling an audience. Nothing wrong with that, but Josh Safdie has proven he can do more than just thrill — with his brother by his side, at least.

Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is opulent and grandiose, sprawling across decades and twisting through split narratives. As a filmmaker obsessed with the humanity of monsters and monstrosity of humans, his vision of the tale fittingly exaggerates Victor Frankenstein’s arrogance and his Creature’s sensitivity. Subtle, it is not – but the earnestness is a del Toro hallmark. “Frankenstein” sees the filmmaker visually and thematically drawing from his own repertoire to retell the iconic story and audaciously reimagine its conclusion.

Del Toro has been fixated on “Frankenstein” since he first saw James Whale’s 1931 film as a child. He once said he hoped to make two to three films based on the story, a concept presumably dashed after the project was picked up in 2023 by Netflix. Many of the filmmaking decisions ring as a compromise between a larger vision and one palatable for broader audiences. I was swept away seeing this in theaters, but felt that the boundaries of commercial filmmaking box aspects of the story in.

“Frankenstein” is positioned as a triptych, with a Prelude, Victor’s story, and the Creature’s story. The Prelude establishes the frame narrative the novel is known for, and as the film progresses we dart between the past and the present ship of Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) in the Arctic where Victor (Oscar Isaac) is sheltered after being chased by The Creature (Jacob Elordi). Del Toro sticks true to the spirit of Shelley’s source material throughout his translations and additions.

Victor’s retelling begins in childhood, when an education in anatomy from his father (Charles Dance) was accompanied by physical abuse and an emphasis on objectivity over emotion. He had a strong bond with his mother, to his father’s chagrin, and was crushed when she died birthing his brother William. The mom? Mia Goth in a dual role – later playing Elizabeth, the fiancee of William (Felix Kammerer) and Victor’s love interest.

Isaac is compellingly brash and domineering as Victor, toying with his experiments with a detached carelessness. Funded by benefactor Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), he sets up shop in a decrepit laboratory and cobbles together The Creature. The ensuing gore is thrillingly grotesque and maybe the most grotesque del Toro has gone thus far in displaying human callousness.

Victor is inept and emotionally unavailable with The Creature, observing indications of humanity as technical mistakes. He rejects The Creature’s infantile nature but Elizabeth is fascinated, and the two develop a unique bond. This Oedipal triangle of filial resentment and motherly infatuation speaks volumes about the godly hand Victor plays and his self-wrought misery. It echoes del Toro’s 2015 film “Crimson Peak,” where the murderous Sharpe siblings engage in a relationship after a childhood of shared abuse. The Gothic trope of incest is employed in both films to contextualize an anti-hero’s perversions.

Del Toro also largely draws from his 2017 film “The Shape of Water” in fleshing out the dynamic between the three core characters. Elizabeth is the person who makes Victor feel the most “alive,” but also develops an intimate, romantic-coded connection with the Creature – much like Elisa’s relationship with the Fish-Man. She is draped in vibrant blues and greens with touches of red – recalling Mama Frankenstein – and draws out red in Victor’s wardrobe as he falls deeper in unrequited love with her. This usage of color is a play straight from “The Shape of Water,” and the parallels are emphasized as she visits The Creature in the basement of the laboratory, running water casting shadows across the vaulted ceilings.

The costuming by Kate Hawley is gorgeously elaborate, and the sets by Tamara Deverell are equally so. All aspects of production work in tandem to produce visual symbolism that ranges from the overt – the Creature brought to life crucified on a cross – to the more layered; A relief of Medusa is one of the first faces The Creature attempts to mimic. The perceived sin of existence is woven throughout the film and draws upon “Paradise Lost.”

These intricate metaphors are all just as well executed as one can expect from a del Toro feature, and mostly tastefully implemented. The rich potential for deeper readings is one of my favorite things about him as a filmmaker – but a good metaphor does not a film make! The issue is the lavishness swallows up the characters it features. Del Toro films find grounding when sets and extraneous visual elements intertwine with the people that inhabit them and take on a life of their own — the bleeding red clay in the house in “Crimson Peak,” the unforgiving concrete and fluorescents of the laboratory in “The Shape of Water.” The same breathing room isn’t present here when the brutal pace of the plot dashes viewers across both time and space. It is at its best in the towering laboratory, and when the titular Creature first grows into his existence.

It has to be said: he’s hot. Empathetic, good with his hands, kind to animals, a non-performative reader – are you free Friday night, Creature? Del Toro’s visualization of the Creature – one designed on a short deadline – has an extra-terrestrial beauty, like a patch-worked Engineer from the “Alien” franchise. Elordi aptly conveys the dual naïveté and intelligence of an artificially conceived being, in total awe of natural life and the cycles that govern it. His Creature has the additional twist of immortality that brings a tragic edge to his story. His super-strength, I was less convinced by the addition of. It is of ridiculous proportions – he moves an entire ship at one point. He also uses it to pummel opponents in action sequences that feel made for an entirely different film. They are points where “Frankenstein” grasps for the audience’s attention and shows its cracks.

The ultimate conclusion of the tale is the biggest departure from Shelley’s original novel, an optimistic take on cycles of abuse that draws from del Toro’s own life. I appreciate it conceptually, but it feels unearned in its execution. Things structurally falter throughout the third act and the frame narrative is thrown aside when Victor’s perspective suddenly interrupts the Creature’s story. The movement of the plot starts outpacing the vision of the film; When the story catches up to the Arctic present, you wonder how we got here in the first place.

It’s Victor who led us there, but his fate doesn’t feel like a conclusion the film has been naturally pushing toward. Conversely, Thomas Sharpe of “Crimson Peak” occupies a similar anti-hero position as Victor and finds purposeful absolution in death – his ghost saves his wife Edith from being killed by his sister Lucille. It’s a pitch-perfect ending for the character and his conflicting loyalties and desires, too polar to coexist in life. I expected no redemptive specters in “Frankenstein,” but there’s not enough meaningful focus on Victor and the Creature for the ending between them to feel warranted. It’s a disappointing final stretch when much of what precedes it is so exquisitely realized.

What I ultimately love about del Toro’s films is the pathos that guides them and the reverence with which his worlds are rendered. This remains true for “Frankenstein” even when its inclinations of digestibility constrain it. It was thrilling to see such direct references to both “Crimson Peak” and the “Shape of Water,” but each appearance just made me recall films that felt fuller and less compromised. Would a two to three film length adaption have been the answer? There’s likely not much money to be made there, just as his 2015 Gothic romance was a commercial failure. Either way, this is the version with del Toro’s sign off: flashes of familiar brilliance in an adaptation that has had its wings clipped. In bringing the colossal story to life, del Toro shrinks down his own lofty ideas.

This summer I watched Celine Song’s “Materialists” — a film with beautiful visual language that is *materially* just okay. Regardless of its shallow messaging, I was struck by a statement the protagonist Lucy makes when speaking with her potential suitor, Harry. “I come from a ‘fight in the street’ kind of family,” she says, enforced by a later flashback to an argument with her ex, John. Harry is taken aback by the idea, raised to view such public arguments as disgraceful. Talking about family is a toe-dip into vulnerability, a sharing of the most personal part of life that divulges, in many ways, the kind of person you are.

‘Do I fight in the street? I do, don’t I,’ I found myself thinking, feeling called out. That single line sent me reeling in the dark of the theater and followed me all the way home. My watch of “Materialists” came on the heels of a particularly bad breakup, the kind that involuntarily restructures your insides and makes you confront the worst parts of yourself. In this instance, I stood face-to-face with my anger, and flipped back the pages of my life to re-examine every instance in which it had bubbled and boiled over.

Anger is insistent — mine leaks out through tears. This always feels humiliating, and I have heard dozens of adjectives used to describe it. “Dramatic” and “sensitive” are a few. But when the hot coil of emotion burns in my chest, it feels impossible to hold back the flood that follows.

I have cried in every place imaginable — high school classrooms, public bathrooms, planes, trains, and automobiles. It is only recently that I’ve been able to identify just how often those tears were anger, having misperceived it all as “sadness” or “frustration.” It is scary to call it anger and realize how deep it lies. Psychologically, anger is an emotional response to perceived threats to our goals. We fully develop it only at the end of our first year of life, when our self-awareness and social awareness shape our psychological judgments. It becomes an essential instrument in asserting our self-autonomy in the wake of failure, and identifying key boundaries.

Anger, like most emotions, serves as a sign of well-being — its presence signals a need to tackle a threat. In truth, not every situation that makes us angry requires us to eliminate the perceived threat at hand. There, the onus is upon us to confront the feeling and regulate it. Accepting anger in all its raw ugliness is one critical component — among several — to achieving a “mastery of the self.” I was resistant to doing so. And I am not the only one.

We love to speak of anger as something that is outside us — gripping and possessive. We do not want to be defined by our anger, just as I have strained against being defined by my public tears and street-side arguments. It is easy to say “nobody’s perfect” and harder to internalize the notion. Personally, my moments of anger and sharp-tongued arguing weigh heavy. I guilt myself for my high-octane emotions and their disruptive nature and mentally flog myself as an outlet for my contrition. My friend Atmika told me that for an agnostic-raised-Hindu I have a strange amount of “Catholic guilt” surrounding my emotions.

Shame is a chaser. Its sharp judgement smooths over the bitter dissonance. Then logic surges in anger’s wake to self-soothe and my logic adopts the judgement I perceive from others. It says “burrow in shame, you are not fit to be here.”

Anger feels monstrous. We do anything to evade looking it in the eye, and shame is an escape of convenience. I have seen people bury their anger six feet deep to muffle the sound, and others, unable to grip wriggling reins, cede control. Either is an injustice to the emotion, an offloading of something that is entirely yours.

So in combating the shame, I am attempting to befriend my anger. I give it voice even when it is tiresome and I have the inked pages and carpal tunnel to prove it. When I feel it pulse through me, I do not surrender, but join in its galloping pace. I listen to its barks and snarls and nod in assent. I cradle its grizzled face and whisper the truths only we will ever know. We fall asleep fitfully sometimes, but still together. I know that its intensity is often with good reason, and with that recognition it has grown less reactive and more confident.

My friend Eleanor described anger as a “window into the psyche” and that phrase has helped me accept others' anger as much as my own. How we express and deal with the emotion is deeply indicative of our personality and past, especially our caregivers’ approach to anger. Seeing expressions of anger is like being offered a narrow view into someone’s history. It’s beautiful when somebody allows that window to open enough for you to see through.

Lucy and Harry in Materialists are ultimately driven apart due to the emotional gap between them, evident in Harry’s own unwillingness toward vulnerability and Lucy’s craving for connection. I have seen people deride the film as “broke boy propaganda” because Harry is the “obvious choice,” and this willful misunderstanding is amusing to me. Harry carries deep shame in his imperfections, and curates his image so much it hinders him from being free. His foil John has no perfection to hide behind, angry at his broke-ness but leading with his heart on his sleeve.

Lucy lies beside Harry in bed but feels miles away, while she and John kiss and fight and spill their guts to each other at a wedding they gate-crash. If you can feel that close to someone in a foreign space, is that not your person?

Eleanor’s analogy continues to resonate with me: anger is a powerful window into another’s psyche. Lucy wants someone to knock her window open and trade places. Climb through the gap and peer out from the other side. Fighting in the street be damned if, at the end of the day, Lucy can love someone for everything including their anger — not in spite of it. I’m inclined to agree with her.