There is no scene in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights where a nun gets aroused by a dying man’s erection, nor is there a sequence in which Catherine Earnshaw (played here by Margot Robbie) spies on some BDSM taking place in the barn below her home.
This latest blockbuster film adaptation of the novel from Saltburn director Emerald Fennell can often feel like an elaborate prank on the armies of senior citizens who will be turning out in force to see an epic costume drama. It’ll get audiences talking in the same way the director’s previous film did, and is extremely likely to cause controversy through the very modern ways she plays fast and loose with the source material.
If you ask the cast of “Wuthering Heights”, however, they had zero interest in making something which existed to shake up a canonical work of English literature. Academy Award nominee Hong Chau, who plays the Earnshaw’s servant (and narrator of the source text) Nelly, explained to us why she felt the movie was far more “authentic” than the surrounding controversy would suggest.
“I feel like I’m not necessarily drawn to things where you can feel a director is trying to deliberately shake things up, because that doesn’t feel intrinsic and authentic to the storyteller. Emerald isn’t trying to turn things on their head or shake things up – this is just her singular voice, and that’s why she’s such a compelling and interesting filmmaker.”
However, Chau did shake things up on a personal level whilst preparing for her performance, stepping away from the intense routine she usually undertakes when getting ready for a literary adaptation.
“I didn’t read the book, which I confessed to Emerald when we first met, and it didn’t seem to bother her as she still hired me! I still haven’t read the book, because I wanted this movie to exist as its own experience.
“I normally read the source material, it’s just part of my routine when working on an adaptation, but I knew that Emerald’s vision was going to be so different, it would hinder everything if I brought any preconceptions or baggage if I felt like something was missing here. I just leant on the script and Emerald; I wanted to be present and serve her vision.”
For those of you who have never read Wuthering Heights, Nelly is a critical character as the narrator of generations of trauma between Heathcliff (here played by Jacob Elordi), the Earnshaws and the Lintons. The tragic love story is all pieced together via second hand anecdotes she recounts to a new tenant generations later, baffled by how unwelcome he’s been made to feel by his new landlord, Heathcliff.
This framing device has been scrapped here, with Fennell now stating that Nelly was the hardest character she had to write by a considerable margin. Without the “baggage” of the source material, however, Chau wasn’t as daunted by the challenge of bringing her to life.
“She told me during our first meeting that this was the hardest part for her to write, so I was happy to try anything she wanted to bring her to life. We had a great time playing and figuring it out on set, and the experience really gave me a greater awareness of how much an editor can play into a performance, because I was really coming to Nelly with clear eyes.
“I love getting directions from Emerald; she has a great way of answering any questions in a way that’s easy to digest. The most difficult thing is that she makes being on set fun, so it’s a challenge to try and present the part in a way which still feels pure and appropriate!”
Another character given a bold makeover here is Isabella Linton, Catherine’s eventual rival for Heathcliff, with early viewers in agreement that Alison Oliver’s performance is the standout amongst the supporting cast. The actress first broke out as the troubled Venetia in Saltburn, and Fennell’s highly specific tone blending deadpan comedy and psychosexual drama now appears to be second nature for the actress.
“I’d read the book before, but when reading Emerald’s screenplay, I found it amazing due to how she had uncovered the themes buried in the text she was interested in exploring, and how those made her feel when she first read it”, Oliver told Zavvi. “I was going back to the book when I was preparing, highlighting details about Isabella that were helpful and relevant to the script, but I didn’t want to overthink it.
“This is Emerald’s vision, so I knew I had to let go of the source material and surrender myself to her on the day. I think there are aspects of the book that were helpful to me, which still feel very much a part of the character in this iteration, but I had to allow myself to let go of a lot which wasn’t.”
In the novel, Isabella is immediately taken by Heathcliff, with the pair only marrying as he wants to make Cathy jealous. It’s a tension bubbling under the surface there, but in keeping with Fennell’s obsessions with unhealthy sub-dom dynamics, here Heathcliff couldn’t be more open about his manipulative plans, and the contempt he has for his new partner.
It’s the second Fennell film in a row where Oliver has played a character emotionally manipulated by a striking outsider, but she’d never considered any similarities between the two roles.
“They’re very different people to play; I wasn’t thinking about Venetia when I was playing Isabella, but I think they are both characters who are trying to contain a lot. In the case of Isabella, I felt she was reverberating around me far more the whole time, because she’s the kind of figure who’s desperate to get everyone around her to love her, which rubbed off a lot!
“In Saltburn, my character can play her cards far closer to her chest a bit more. But I think there is a similarity in that way, even though both felt like very different people to play.”
Like Chau, Oliver similarly doesn’t see Fennell as “shaking up” beloved source material but being able to recapture its essence through a distinctive lens. In that sense, she sees it as far closer in spirit to the recent wave of literary adaptations.
“What I think is cool is that, with each generation, there will always be a new wave of period adaptations; we’ve had Frankenstein and Nosferatu recently, and we’ve got another Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice on the way. It’s great to look back and see that, through the years, new generations can interpret classical stories and roles – the way Jacob plays Heathcliff is so different to how Laurence Olivier played him in the 1930s, and it speaks so much to how these stories and themes can continue to evolve over time.”
