ICYMI (but then again...how could you miss it?!) Wuthering Heights is officially in cinemas.
In typical Emerald Fennel style, it's anything but traditional: subverting the whole concept of a 'period drama' thanks to a Charli XCX soundtrack, iconic fashion and lashings of BDSM.
However, there are also plenty of plot differences between the film and the book on which it is based...such as the film's ending.
The movie places much more of an emphasis on the story's central couple and their love story, which spans the first half of the novel, and this approach impacts how the film concludes.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Emerald also addressed how the film changes the plot of the book. In the book, Heathcliff is able to visit Cathy before her death. In the film, Cathy hallucinates a conversation with Heathcliff, who is not actually there.
"There are about three different meetings and three different speeches, and so part of it was consolidating that," said Emerald.
"But also, we talk a lot about Romeo and Juliet and, obviously, when we meet Isabella, she's talking about that kind of story and about that missed thing, and I feel so much that Cathy and Heathcliff's romance was about missing each other."
"And so what I did was I brought a lot of the love forward, and a lot of those really important conversations forward, to give them some time so that it didn't just happen at the end."
Emerald also mentioned her decision to end the film with Cathy's death, rather than depicting her return as a ghost who begs to be reunited with Heathcliff.
"It begins where it ends and ends where it begins. And that's the thing about love, and it's the thing about the book, right?" she explained.
"It's that it's forever and it's cyclical, and so there's no stop — even when there's a terrible, sad, tragic stop, it's not really a stop — because that's what the book feels so much about," she said.
"It's about the depths of human feeling and how it exists in a profound way, not just a physical one. And so that, I don't know, that felt like the right way to end it for me," Emerald added.
Whatever the story, we were definitely sold on Cathy and Heathcliff's love affair, that's for sure!
