Wuthering Heights may be a love it/hate it type of movie considering all its polarizing opinions, but no matter what you think about it, one thing is pretty undeniable. It’s got style, and it’s got vision. After having a blast watching it in a theater packed with women earlier this year, I revisited it on streaming with an HBO Max subscription, and one thing I noticed even more this time is how Cathy’s fits stay true to one color palette the whole time, and I think it’s worth diving into.
Of course, I couldn’t take my eyes off of all of Cathy’s clothes going full bodice core during both viewings, but this time all the coordination was impossible to look away from. These are just a few examples below:
So, what’s up with these particular colors? While I would have theorized it would have something to do with red being the shade associated with passion and desire, when CinemaBlend spoke to writer/director Emerald Fennell, she had some interesting thoughts about why she dressed Margot Robbie in the same palette throughout. In her words:
When it comes to the color palette of the clothes, for example, it made sense that Cathy makes an imprint on the world that she's in. Cathy kind of like burns an image onto any space. And so, we wanted to make sure that her clothes were very graphic. So they're black, white, red and occasionally like a silver, because she's always sort of an indelible shape.
Now this is interesting. Cathy needed to “burn” through every moment on screen. During the filmmaker’s chat with us, she also spoke about how the expression of a character’s personality through something like clothing is very specific to Gothic cinema. The genre often evokes intensity that we wouldn’t see in other movies, so the lavish use of red is all part of it. You can check out her full thoughts below:
As she says, it’s not just about the costumes. It was also through the textures she decided to use throughout the sets. I know I’ll never forget this movie’s skin wall, which was actually fashioned out of actual scans of Robbie’s own skin to represent what it feels like for Cathy to be a “collector’s item” to her husband once she gets married.
Fennell’s explanation of the Gothic genre also helps make sense of some of the objects in the movie being exaggerated sizes or how long we have to wait for Cathy and Heathcliff to kiss. Everything is more dramatic and hyperbolic than you’d expect from other movies.
I don’t know about you, but I really appreciate Emerald Fennell’s eye for making her films very distinct, and Wuthering Heights knocks it out of the park in that respect.
