Wuthering Heights director Emerald Fennell: "Everything has to have an emotional purpose"

Boasting a brilliant cast headed up by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, stunning visuals, and wonderful musical contributions from pop superstar Charli XCX – 'House', featuring The Velvet Underground's John Cale, has already enjoyed huge acclaim – Emerald Fennell's hotly anticipated Wuthering Heights hits cinemas today.

Telling the intense and dramatic story of Catherine Earnshaw (Robbie) and her tumultous relationship with Heathcliff (Elordi), an orphan adopted by her family, the adaptation of Emily Bronte's classic novel explores the duo's intense bond, as well as societal barriers, and a cycle of love, revenge and ruin across two generations in the Yorkshire moors.

A celebrated actress noted for her memorable turn as Camilla Parker-Bowles in Netflix smash The Crown, Fennell has already made a major splash as a writer-director with the movies Promising Young Woman and Saltburn. When it comes to the sumptuous visuals of Wuthering Heights, which is her third movie, Fennell points to her collaboration with Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren.

"He’s the best ever and he’s really the same as me," she reflects. "Everything has to have an emotional purpose. He is so talented, but he doesn’t need to be showy. So if we’re going to have a camera move, is it emotionally justified? As long as it’s felt, you can get away with a lot more and have a more expressive world. Really, it’s the same process as it is with everyone, which is to have lots of talk. It’s kind of therapy and looking at images, but they can be anything.

"They’re very often not from other films, or if they are, they’re from things like Donkey Skin, or strange ‘50s melodramas. It’s not that we’re looking at other films that depict the same period even. There is a lot of historical research that goes into it, but that’s not all it is."

The director's work with production designer Suzie Davies is similarly important.

"We have to talk about Suzie cos she’s so chic!" she chuckes. "She’s just incredible. In our early conversations, I said to her, ‘It has to have a primal, emotional subconscious response. In Wuthering Heights, everything’s based around how nature is interrupting this world. We had this concept of slate rock, and the rock was coming in and interrupting the rooms.

"That idea also gets inverted in certain parts, so there’s a feeling of nature being suppressed – there’s taxidermy, flower pressing and walls made of skin."

As might be expected, the latter element involved considerable work to get right.

"We had Margot photograph her skin, particularly her veins and freckles," notes Fennell. "Then it was a very long process of figuring out the best way to make it – in the end, it was padded panelling with printed crepe with her skin on it, and latex overlay. There was a kind of bulge, but it was slightly inconsistent, so each panel bulged out of the wood a little, like it does when you wear a corset. But we needed the latex cos it needed to be able to sweat, and for leeches to glide onto it.

"We also had all these crazy trimmings from Victorian times. But with Suzie, the whole joy of it is you don’t want that stuff to be the first thing you see – the first thing you see is a beautiful pink room. Then you look a bit closer and there are hairs growing out of the moles – that's what the gothic is and that's what interests me.

"That's where working with Suzie, our costume designer Jacqueline Durran and everyone is so thrilling, because we're all looking to pull a hair of out a mole in a wall! And if we're not doing that, then we're not doing anything purposeful or useful."

There is notable visual symbolism in the movie, but Fennell is keen for audiences to unlock it themselves.

"There's so much," she says. "It's so much more fun for people to find it themselves. It would be like circling Where's Wally in a book, it would be kind of cruel – the fun is seeing it for yourself, I hope. Also, with the interior design in the film, it was always about that slightly disconcerting feeling.

"It's that uncanny vibe you always get because it felt so new, the whole place. We went back to those kind of materials a lot – an oil slick texture that was iridescent and sweaty."

• Wuthering Heights is in cinemas now.