David R. Walker

Posts Tagged ‘Hong Chau’

Wuthering Heights

Director: Emerald Fennell

Cast: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell, Charlotte Mellington, Owen Cooper, Amy Morgan

Running Time: 2 hours and 16 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

They say you have to be cruel to be kind. Let’s start with the cruelty.

Did director Emerald Fennell read Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights that was a sensation when published in 1847?

Actress Emerald Fennell turned director with her Oscar winning film Promising Young Woman and then followed that up with the shockingly bizarre and strange Saltburn which was actually terrible. So it was with trepidation I learnt that Emerald Fennell would be doing a film version of Wuthering Heights, a mid-Victorian romantic novel which has been turned into a film countless times from the famous Oscar winning 1939 version starring Sir Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon and David Niven to more recent versions with Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley.

Wuthering Heights was always about a tragic love triangle but at its emotional core is the fiery and unpredictable love between the wilful Catherine Earnshaw and the orphan boy Heathcliff.

In the 2026 version, Oscar nominee Margot Robbie (I,Tonya; Bombshell) stars as Catherine and then the best casting choice ever was to have the hunk of the moment, the towering Oscar nominee Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein) cast as the dashing and brutal Heathcliff.  

While Margot Robbie did her best as the doomed heroine Catherine Earnshaw, I kept seeing Barbie on the Yorkshire Moors and not Catherine. Catherine, despite all warnings from everyone, does indeed ruin her prospects. Robbie seemed to be crying in every scene of the film.

Jacob Elordi on the other hand was brilliant as Heathcliff, looming and hulking, chopping wood with his hairy torso displayed while Catherine succumbs to indecision and repressed desire. Although that desire does not remain that repressed for director Emerald Fennell then decides to turn this version of Wuthering Heights into a vaguely 1970’s soft porn video.

There is a bizarre scene of Catherine masturbating on the moors while Heathcliff sneaks up on her in disbelief. Then there is the equally strange scene of Catherine spying on the kinky servants having a bondage love scene, with the servants played by Ewan Mitchell and Amy Morgan.

Then there is the dubious casting choices in this contemporary version of Wuthering Heights. While Oscar nominee Hong Chau (The Whale) who is superb as the downtrodden servant Nelly, it is the weird choice of British actor Shazad Latif (The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) as Edgar Linton. There was zero chemistry between Latif and Robbie while obviously this is counterpointed by the onscreen chemistry between Robbie and Elordi.

Veteran British TV and film actor Martin Clunes (Shakespeare in Love) is excellent as Catherine’s alcoholic gambling father Mr Earnshaw and another notable exception is Irish actress Alison Oliver as the repressed and gorgeous Isabella, Mr Linton’s ward, filled with Shakespearean notions of love.

Now for the kindness. To be fair to the production designer Suzie Davies who beautifully captures the Moors and the rambling dilapidation of the country estate Wuthering Heights and the fabulous costumes by Oscar winner Jacqueline Durran (Anna Karenina, Little Woman), this film does manage to elevate itself out of the mundane and look like an amazing Vogue cover shoot, drawing on inspiration from Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

Besides the costumes and sets, the dialogue manages to maintain the correct Victorian diction reflective of the times, however there were some completely unnecessary scenes in this version, which Emerald Fennell included to be provocative without respecting the provenance of the original Gothic romantic novel.

Wuthering Heights will do well at the box office as it has enough stunning cinematic moments that the two main stars help generate and will appeal to 21^st century audience. However, I do urge the 21^st century audience to read the far better novel by Emily Bronte who would turn in her grave if she saw this outlandish version.

The statuesque and smouldering Jacob Elordi saves this version from being trashy and he proves that he is a leading man of this age.

Wuthering Heights expertly marketed to be released on the Valentine’s Day weekend gets a film rating of 7 out of 10. Recommended viewing for the production design and the costumes but not for its disrespect to the original novel.

Asteroid City

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Bryan Cranston, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Steve Park, Hong Chau, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, Jeff Goldblum, Grace Edwards, Sophia Lillis, Bob Balaban

Running Time: 1 hour and 44 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Celestial flirtations abound in director Wes Anderson’s latest fluorescent theatrical film, Asteroid City featuring a blossoming cast headlined by two excellent performances by Jason Schwartzman and Oscar nominee Scarlett Johansson (Jojo Rabbit, Marriage Story) as theatre actors Augie Steenbeck and the glamorous Midge Campbell who find themselves acting in the eccentric playwright Conrad Earp wonderfully played with deadpan flamboyance by Oscar nominee Edward Norton (Primal Fear, American History X, Birdman)’s new play Asteroid City set in a one horse town in Arizona in 1955 complete without a candy coloured diner and a nuclear testing site.

Asteroid City has a population of 69.

Visually and aesthetically, Asteroid City is beautiful to watch as a film, like a trippy popup book with fabulous colours and eccentric characters from singing cowboys and random socialites, from military personnel to perilous children who comprise the space cadets of the town.

At a random event celebrating the arrival of an asteroid in a desert, the entire town is gathered and listening to an articulate speech by General Grif Gibson played by Jeffrey Wright (No Time To Die) when out of nowhere a cheeky alien arrives in a garish green UFO and unexpectedly steals the asteroid while the town looks on in horror and curiosity.

Luckily Augie who is a reluctant father of four children, a son named Woodrow wonderfully played by Jake Ryan and triplet daughters known collectively by their grandfather as The Witches, managed to photograph the alien. Then the military step in and quarantine the town, a suitable jibe by screenwriter Wes Anderson at the weird lockdown restrictions imposed by Governments across the world during the Covid19 pandemic in 2020.

Despite the ensemble cast, it is really Jason Schwartzman and Scarlett Johansson’s film as they both shine in a complex self-reflexive narrative which takes inspiration from American playwright Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. Jason Schwartzman who played King Louis XVI opposite Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and is soon to star in his uncle Francis Ford Coppola’s new film Megalopolis, really shines as a talented stage actor and part time homosexual Augie Steenbeck in a role which is equally quirky and subversive.

Asteroid City is a highly theatrical comically absurd film serving as a dazzling critique on the bizarre nature of events in 2020 and cleverly presents the concept of The West as a construct to be interchanged and taken down again, much like a cardboard city. Notable turns in the film go to Tom Hanks as Grandfather Stanley Zak, Oscar winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton) as Dr Hickenlooper and Oscar nominee Bryan Cranston (Trumbo) as The Host.

Take yourself on a journey and see the visually splendid Asteroid City, which is not perfect as a film, but it is enchanting in a celestial way and will find a cult following everywhere much like the Space Cadets that follow the Milky Way. With impressive set designs, Asteroid City should win an Oscar for Production Design in the 2024 Academy Awards.

Not as brilliant as The Grand Budapest Hotel, but Asteroid City gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10, a quirky self-reflexive play about a city that doesn’t exist and an alien that possibly does.

Wes Anderson outdoes himself with a script and a bizarre film which received a 6 minute standing ovation at the film’s glittering premiere at the 2023 Festival de Cannes.