Owen Cooper in Wuthering Heights

I was worried Cooper (Adolescence), playing the younger version of Heathcliff, might have only moments of screen time. Not at all. The first quarter hour of the film is spent with the adolescent Heathcliff and Cathy, and it's foundational to the pathology of their adult relationship. And Cooper is very good. He gets a bit more screen time right at the end, including a shot that I thought should have been the film's final frame. Alas, it is followed by a matching shot of Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie. Even if director Emerald Fennell (Saltburn) had insisted on closing with the shot of Cooper and Charlotte Mellington (who plays adolescent Cathy, petulantly torturing Cooper to set the tone for the rest of the film), Robbie (whose company produced) would probably have overruled her. Mellington is weaker than Cooper in the opening scenes. Robbie does better, but there is not really much to Cathy, at least in this version, beyond petulance. Cooper and Elordi provide what interest the film has. It isn't a lot, though the cinematography, costumes, sets and locations are frequently stunning and Martin Clunes, as Cathy's father, gives a commanding performance. We didn't need another film of this novel (this is apparently the eighteenth), a fact Fennell implicitly acknowledges by enclosing the title in quotation marks. The deep imbrication of sex and violence is not something I shy away from (see here or my post from 2017 linked below). On the contrary, it has become an obsession. Yet Fennell's vision carries this too far for my taste. Sex, for her, is nothing but violence. (WARNING: MINOR SPOILER AHEAD) The film opens with a black screen and the sounds of heavy breathing and rhythmic movement, so of course we expect to see people fucking. Not exactly. We are at a hanging. A boy -- not Cooper, I think, though I am not sure -- delivers the first line of dialogue: "He's got a stiffy!" And the hanged man very obviously does, much to the voyeuristic delight of the assembled crowd, and Cathy in particular, though I think Fennell is claiming Cathy doesn't recognize her own response as sexual. This opening pretty much captures Fennell's view of sex, both in this film and in Saltburn (2023), which also starred Elordi (though Barry Keoghan had the larger role). I don't think she has much to say about the human condition beyond this, which I am afraid leaves her without much to say at all. Her visual talents are considerable, but this perspective leaves her characters as striking images without depth. The images can be stunning, but they are ultimately lifeless. It's hard to look forward to whatever film she will make next. I think for Fennell sex destroys the soul. The opening scenes with Cooper and Mellington have more interest than the rest of the film because puberty hasn't yet done this soul destroying work on them. Cathy's father is a gambler, a glutton and a drunk, but this at least gives him obsessions to pursue beyond sex, and provides Clunes more to work with than Elordi and Robbie. Sex, Fennell is telling us, is empty. So is a bottle after you have finished it. But at least you can just open another. hugzu ;-p (Boychat.org link) Sex, boys, and violence (Pharmakon post)