{"id":325124,"date":"2025-08-07T12:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/325124\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:08:10","slug":"aggressively-provocative-first-screening-of-saltburn-directors-wuthering-heights-gets-mixed-reaction-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/325124\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Aggressively provocative\u2019: first screening of Saltburn director\u2019s Wuthering Heights gets mixed reaction | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Equal parts intrigue and scepticism had already dogged the forthcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights from Emerald Fennell \u2013 whose first two films, Promising Young Woman<\/a> and Saltburn<\/a>, displayed a love of mordant and explicit envelope-pushing.<\/p>\n

As reported by World of Reel<\/a>, a first test screening for the film, which stars Margot Robbie and Saltburn\u2019s Jacob Elordi, took place earlier this week in Dallas, and audience reaction was \u201cmixed\u201d.<\/p>\n

One attender described the film as \u201caggressively provocative and tonally abrasive\u201d and suggested it strongly recalled the \u201cstylised depravity\u201d of Saltburn with scenes of \u201cclinical masturbation\u201d, a bondage-tinged sexual encounter involving horse reins and less conventional romance or emotional complexity than many aficionados of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel might expect.<\/p>\n

The film apparently opens with a public hanging in which the \u201ccondemned man ejaculates mid-execution\u201d. The crowd react orgiastically, and a nun \u201cfondles the corpse\u2019s visible erection\u201d.<\/p>\n

Other signature Fennell shots include lingering takes of \u201csuggestive textures\u201d such as egg yolks, bread dough and slug trails.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year the film\u2019s casting director, Kharmel Cochrane, defended her choices<\/a> after many suggested Robbie was too old to play the role of Catherine Earnshaw, as well as questioning Elordi\u2019s ethnicity, since Heathcliff, the foundling with whom she falls in love, is generally perceived to have a Romany or Gypsy background.<\/p>\n

Most big and small screen adaptations of the novel have ignored this, with the character having been played by actors including Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy and Timothy Dalton. Andrea Arnold\u2019s 2011 adaptation<\/a> cast a mixed race actor, James Howson, in the role.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Sands film festival in Scotland, Cochrane said there was \u201cno need to be accurate\u201d as the source material is \u201cjust a book\u201d.<\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cThere\u2019s definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy. Wait until you see the set design, because that is even more shocking. And there may or may not be a dog collar in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film, which is scheduled for release on Valentine\u2019s Day 2026, will be Robbie\u2019s first major role since Barbie and Fennell\u2019s first film since Saltburn became an audience sensation in 2023, although it underperformed with awards bodies.<\/p>\n

World of Reel quotes another attender of the Dallas screening as saying that despite strong leading performances, Fennell\u2019s take on their characters is sufficiently \u201ccold and unlikable\u201d that engagement with their fates is made difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Equal parts intrigue and scepticism had already dogged the forthcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights from Emerald Fennell \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-325124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114987408149087941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}