Now playing: The Rules of Attraction: Expanded Motion Picture Soundtrack. RIP James Van Der Beek.

Bet you didn’t expect to see me this soon, did you? The snow was melting in New York City (and hello blizzard!) in the week since I last emailed you a week ago, and I’ve been jamming away on my keyboard along the way.

We love an all-consuming romance, right? The kind of infatuation that changes every waking moment of your life? We just went through another Valentine’s Day, and if you didn’t get the real love or lust at home, you might have been seeking it out elsewhere. I hope for your sake you weren’t hoping to get it from Emerald Fennell’s new film “Wuthering Heights.”

This story, though, doesn’t start at the multiplex.

Why did I wait until I was 41 to read Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights?” Maybe because it took me an embarrassing number of years to begin to shrug off the idea that some culture is gender-locked. You know, typical teen boy thinking of "oh Britney Spears' music isn't for me because I'm a guy." I think it began with pop music, and Charli XCX's "Superlove" and Carly Rae Jepsen's "Run Away With Me” unlocking an appreciation. Before I knew it, I was singing along to Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody” in a warehouse in Wolverhampton. My dumbass mindset didn't crumble down all in one fell shattering swoop, though.

While I glommed onto modern works focused outside of the male point of view — from the Greta Gerwig oeuvre to Miranda July’s “All Fours,” plus everything Kristen Stewart’s done post-Twilight — older pieces I ignored as a child and thought of as too stuffy stood apart. Or at least that was the case until I watched the 1995 BBC "Pride and Prejudice" miniseries for the first time. A god damn brilliant project.

And then, last year, I heard word that Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" was coming to the movie theater via director/discourse-magnet Emerald Fennell. The movie on its own didn’t exactly thrill me in the original announcements, but my ears perked up once I learned Charli XCX herself was doing the score. As I paid attention to the trailers, though, I noticed the film wasn't exactly hiding that this was less of an adaptation and more of an interpretation or even a remix. Part of me wants to call this the “Chopped & Screwed" version, considering what Fennell did, but I can't apply DJ Screw's term to a project that's been as white-washed as this.

The bigger signs of change came with the trailer that made fans of the book shout online that there was no way Fennell's version would be a faithful adaptation. This observation went from theory to established fact (see below) well before the review embargo hit, so I'm not really here to shout "IT DIFFERNT!" for the sake of saying it. 

All of this told me that I had to read the book before I saw movie that I now had a morbid curiosity about. Making matters all the more compelling was how I felt Fennell's two previous movies, “Promising Young Woman” and “Saltburn,” had such great unmet potential, though they could have just been victims of hype cycles and trailer oversaturation. I typically think you don't need to have read a book to have a strong, valid opinion about the film adaptation, but this seemed a good a time as any to put Emily Brontë's book under my belt.

I had no idea what I was in for.

I am not exactly fluent with 19th century prose, and so I knew going in that this was going to be tough (just like when I read Shakespeare in high school). I could have used a book club for this one, but my incomparable friends Victoria Song and Sophy Ziss helped me get by. This style of English often required triple readings, and it took me more than a couple of nights to get my sea legs. I grew up thinking you’re supposed to know every word, which always makes me trip up and hit a crosseyed wall whenever I was tasked with reading Shakespeare. The difficulty doesn’t just stem from idioms and phrasing, though, but through Brontë’s characters sharing names with their parents, and the character Heathcliff being a mononym, just like Madonna or Prince.

And while all of this makes for a steep climb when you’re reading “Wuthering Heights,” paragraphs crumbling under my fingers like the rope bridge of William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer.” My momentum finally ramped up one night when I put 100 or so more pages under my belt, as the ups and downs of Brontë’s characters began to swing with such dramatic force that I needed to know how it all went. I fully accepted that I wasn't going to understand everything said, but I was finding what I needed to figure out in order to turn the page with confidence.

Throughout the process, I was increasingly confused, as Brontë’s book felt much more about spite and trauma than romance. People could confuse the two, sure, but even though I saw the arguments that the trailer isn’t authentic to the book, I gaslit myself into thinking it couldn’t be too different. I had to have been reading the book wrong.

These characters, who often felt like lunatics, were out of control. But at least narrator Nelly Dean said as much when she told us readers she considered she might be the only person of sound mind on the premises. While I agreed with her and often winced at the melodramas going on at the titular property, I could not put it down. 17 days after I began, I was done. And god damn Emily Brontë hits some great lines and moments, with the last one I grabbed onto being “I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning.”

Still, throughout my read, and on the F train to the movie theater, I kept thinking about the biggest and most glaring red flag. One of Fennell’s biggest changes, as you’ve undoubtedly heard, is inherent in the choice to cast Australia’s tallest son Jacob Elordi to play Heathcliff, one of the book’s most important characters, and one who is decidedly not white. And while Heathcliff’s race in the book is undefined, his non-whiteness is pretty key to the character, in ways that really left me confused about how the heck the story will go, except for some obvious oversimplification for the sake of distribution and convenience. Her tale, I assumed and have basically heard, was a hyper romantic, and what would happen if she could publish her own version, much how “Fifty Shades of Grey” was a fanfic twist on “Twilight.” Except that's not what I got.

Talking with a variety of friends and strangers about Brontë’s book, I’ve learned it’s basically one of the ultimate Rorschach tests. Whether you see it as one of the canonical romances or an examination of how trauma is passed down generationally is on you, and life you sat down to read it with. Its fingerprints are found across the pop culture I grew up with, and the most glaring bad trope that I saw in the book was a critical misunderstanding because someone eavesdropping on a conversation abandons their spying before the end of the words. The particular instance of that incident I’m thinking of happens in such a way that I started to think about what Brontë thinks of her own characters. 

You come to Brontë's book with the youthful romances you had or didn't have, the parentage you swore about or didn't swear about, and the home you were or weren't afraid of dying in. If Nelly Dean seeing herself as above them wasn’t obvious enough, this moment sees the author highlight the flimsy ground in which this is all happening. That’s when I started to wonder if Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” is about looking back at your dumb, youthful days. And as someone still taking some risks with their own heart, I was trying to be open to enjoy Fennell's film.

I guess I should say this, but … spoiler warning. I try to avoid out-and-out plot points, though.

I hate to say a movie is good or bad, but god damn everyone has a good reason to despise Emerald Fennell's “Wuthering Heights.” It's not just the Brontë loyalists who should cry “bullshit,” though they do have the most ammunition for damnation. Catherine’s “I am Heathcliff” monologue was abridged, which will be enough for some to declare a pox on the Fennell house. But while her deviations away from the core topic of the book (more on that below) are the original sin, it’s not the biggest problem.

Fennell’s "Wuthering Heights" is a movie that seeks and fails to be romantic and sexy, giving us an unbelievably flat, lifeless, and limp film. If it managed to be an actual hot and tawdry film, it’s possible we could have excused things, but its main mission is a whiff (and wow that’s a terrible misuse of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi). You don’t need to reproduce the original manuscript to make a great adaptation, just look at Amy Heckerling’s “Clueless,” the thoroughly-modern version of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” and you’ll see wildly different scenes and narratives, but “Clueless” is a fun, great movie that’s still true to the soul and message of its source material. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is none of the above.

I saw the first bit of rot in the early scenes, where I didn't buy the connection between the young Catherine and her newly adopted family member Heathcliff. The kids aren't bad actors, but it's all terribly rushed, and while Heathcliff's sacrifice for Catherine and his words of devotion are strong, it just didn't land, as we’d barely seen them spend much time together. In the moment, I wasn’t waiting around for Catherine’s brother Hindley, whom Fennell redacted from the story, because I was trying to meet Fennell in the story she gave us. And that tale truly fell apart at the big montage that’s supposed to be sexy, but comes off like a mid-tier Gwen Stefani music video: anodyne and sterile. This could have happened because Fennell is weaving her sex scenes from scratch, as Brontë’s book didn’t have any of that, but writing taut sex scenes isn’t impossible. But every time Catherine and Heathcliff get physical, it’s rushed and not given any time to linger and build, which probably works for anyone who thinks sex is inherently sexy into and of itself, and that tight bodices are enough. In the era of “Heated Rivalry,” we've learned to expect more.

Speaking of expecting more, I hope you don’t go in expecting Fennell to cover the second half of Brontë’s novel. It’s just not there. Oh, and Heathcliff’s truly unhinged digging from the novel? Also gone. You know where it’s not gone? The 2009 two-part adaptation on ITV, where Tom Hardy plays Heathcliff with a proper madness. I watched that this week in my research for this story, and it’s pretty darn good. A little goofy at times, but “Wuthering Heights” is not a stable story.

And while Fennell seemingly stripped nearly everything complicated or unique away, she didn't replace it all much that was that much better. I keep thinking about Alexander Skarsgård’s Johannes character from the Charli XCX “The Moment,” yelling that they couldn’t exclude families from the Brat tour documentary’s potential audience. I’m sorry, but great art is difficult. But yes let’s isolate the weirdnesses that we got from Catherine’s brother Hindley and make Isabella Edgar's ward and not his sister.

Oh, and while the choice to make Heathcliff white here will make many question Fennell’s intents, he’s not alone in his situation. While she made Heathcliff white and far more sexual, she turned the canonically white Edgar Linton into a non-white character who is something of a cuckold and no longer gets any desire from Catherine. Even odder is the case of Hong Chau’s Nelly Dean, where Fennell turned a relatively-relatable (though a bit of an unreliable narrator) white housekeeper into a non-white villain? I have no idea why Fennell thought these were good moves, but on the topic of Nelly’s misdeeds, my gut says she knows that Brontë’s Catherine and Heathcliff are far from innocents and she wants the world to be more against them than it was. At times, Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" felt like it was riffing on Roger Kumble's "Cruel Intentions," though she refused to make her leads more villainous. This is fan service for herself, and anyone who wants Catherine and Heathcliff to not be as responsible for their doomed fates.

So, what actually works here? If you enjoy over-the-top aesthetics, know the rooms of Thrushcross Grange (the other estate of the story) are pretty outlandish, with oversaturated color, bold textiles and wide-angle shots. And wow the bedroom walls are unsettling.

Who else gets credit for what works best about Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights," though? Since I’m not handing anything to the director, my brain instinctually says "the actors get the credit for doing their best to respect the audience," so kudos to Alison Oliver and Jacob Elordi, whose work as Isabella and Heathcliff grounds the movie.

From the second my audience met Oliver’s Isabella, we began to react in unison to every wide-eyed look and reaction. She gave most of the film's best moments from her first moment, as she yelped at Catherine spying on her and Edgar. There's a manic intensity to this character, who seems to be an audience surrogate for how Fennell thinks we should be leering at the characters. I just wish there was more of Isabella for the audience to engage with. 

Elordi trying to save a film is nothing new, as he just got the same luck of the draw with the good half of GDT's "Frankenstein." I know I'm an easy mark for yearning, which he does fantastically in the first hour, but even when the movie is giving him little to work with, Elordi's expressions are at least meme worthy. That shot with the pipe at the dinner table has a chance at online immortality.

No offense is meant to Margot Robbie, though, because I feel like she has the least interesting moments in the script. She does get to exclaim “I am Heathcliff” as she tells Nelly how much she is apart of her soul, and she does get to graze the character’s wickedness and pettiness, but she doesn’t spend a lot of time in the latter, because when Fennell makes Nelly an out-and-out villain, she takes away plenty of dear Cathy's chances to be a little shit.

Not much else will, though, and it makes me curious if this movie is quickly forgotten or given a director's cut.

Sitting in the theater, hearing the sobs of my fellow patrons as they composed themselves, I pondered how I could be hearing right. Yes, people were crying authentically, and not at the fact they just spent that much time watching that much mid-tier movie. It got me thinking of how Fennell could have seen this movie inside of Brontë’s book. We all come with our own lenses.

On the way home, my brain got caught on thoughts of the latter half of Brontë’s book, and Fennell’s decision to not include it. While I respected what Brontë was doing with the second half of the book, it just didn't hit me as much the first. Fennell’s choice kind of fits, at least if she had the goal of making a crowd-pleasing movie, which doesn’t exactly fit with all of the hell inflicted on the children in that ending. I’m also reminded of my reaction to the first-half of Guillermo Del Toro's “Frankenstein,” when I had been thinking “we get it, hurt people hurt people.” Making a mass market movie with that half risks becoming too pain-by-numbers, and Fennell’s choices here make me unsure about giving her a challenge.

Remember Fennell’s words from the above embedded interview: “The thing for me is you can't adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book— I can't say I'm making ‘Wuthering Heights.’ It's not possible. What I can say is I'm making a version of it." This just makes me wonder what a different director could do to adapt Brontë’s novel. There must be a director who could make a big-budget version that understood the book as well as the 2009 version and also imbued it with the stylistic flair that Fennell (and many others) enjoyed seeing on the big screen.

That said, while I found Brontë's book a frustrating read, that’s the point. It’s not easy reading. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is also a fail, but that’s because of her botchd execution of her own goals. Fennell's flattening of it makes that source material made her task even harder. And what of her belief that this is the closest she could have gotten? That sounds like a skill issue.

A 12-song Charli XCX album is the kind of thing I must celebrate, and something of note here is that Charli worked off the screenplay, and not the film. That makes sense in terms of deadlines and such, but I would love to see the version of the film she imagined.

While Charli’s album fits the movie well, its most-exciting aspect how it pokes at a potential post-”brat” sound with a darker, stormier and moodier series of tones. But that’s kind of a problem. If I’m quickly jumping to wondering what this means for future Charli projects, I’m not sitting in this record, am I? You get strong moments with “Chains of Love,” “Eyes of the World,” and “Dying for You,” but none of these tracks seem like they have a strong future or chance of sticking with me.

Oh, as a treat, enjoy Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights:”

Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” in 16mm was the centerpiece of my cinematic Valentine’s Day, thanks to a pop-up from Box Set Cinema. This film defies any sort of good/bad dichotomy, because it’s so god damn campy. I wish I hadn’t realized that star Craig Wasson looks like Bill Maher, because it was quite distracting. I need to see more De Palma, to better understand how Jake’s work as the worst trail in unlicensed private detective is meant to be seen.

Just look at this movie’s name, and you might get a sense of how much these guys love hat-on-a-hat-on-a-hat comedy. I am annoyed I knew anything going in, but I need you to support this if you think you’ll enjoy a truth-bending comedy about friendship.

The best part about watching movies is learning you have a new favorite movie of all time, which I hadn’t experienced in years. Fortunately, I got to check out a Film At Lincoln Center screening of a 35mm print of Warren Beatty’s “Reds,” which is shockingly only the second film he directed. This 195-minute epic frames life during Russia’s October Revolution through the lens of an epic romance between John Reed (Beatty) and Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). I was constantly impressed by the visuals, and while the pacing here is fantastic, this movie is all about Keaton. The way she tip-toes on the edge of a meltdown, walking zombie-like at the train station is performance on its own level. The fact that Beatty used so much of his industry capital to get this movie about communism made? What a king.

“Pillion” is a whole knockout blow of relationship chaos. While Emerald Fennell may think she succeeded in bringing a powerful codependent relationship to the big screen, her “Wuthering Heights” has nothing on the mix of surrender, euphoria, lust and devastation in this one. I didn’t realize Alexander Skarsgård had this one in him, but I’m not really surprised he could be one half of an on-screen BDSM couple. Harry Melling has come a long god damn way from being Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies, and his reactions feel so fragile and genuine that I’m looking forward to seeing where his career goes from here.

Thank you for reading this far.

Next time: I’m going deep on the Alamo Drafthouse’s zombie era. Or maybe I’m talking about the horrors I’m reading about in the dating world, and why I’m too optimistic to opt-out.