For filmmakers stuck in a creative lull or stall, there’s nothing better than taking a dip into the public domain, pulling out a work of fiction long past its copyright expiration, and adapting, revising, or reinterpreting it accordingly to match contemporary tastes and their own preoccupations. That’s not to say — or necessarily suggest — that writer-director Emerald Fennell, fresh off a Best Screenplay Academy Award for Promising Young Woman and its divisive, controversy-courting follow-up, Saltburn, ran out of creative juice or fell into a precarious, idea-free slump, and found herself leafing through one of her bookcases for inspiration, eventually settling on one of her favorite novels as a teen, Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë’s 1847 Gothic novel, but it’s certainly well within the realm of…
