Love in a cold climate

Once English filmmaker Andrea Arnold wraps her head around an idea, it's hard for her to let it go. So when the idea to adapt the Emily Bronte classic Wuthering Heights swirled around in her head, she did the only rational thing she knew. She decided to just do it.

'I have never liked the idea of adaptations,' Arnold said. 'A book is such a different language to film and they are often complete as they are, so I have really surprised myself by attempting one. It was like I had no choice. Once the idea was in my head I could not put it down. Even when things became very difficult I couldn't let it go.'

Despite her passion for the project, Arnold's first experience with the story was not of reading the pages of Bronte's classic tome. Instead, she came across it via the iconic 1939 big screen adaptation by director William Wyler.

'The first time I knew of Wuthering Heights was seeing the film with Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Cathy when I was a kid,' Arnold recalls. 'I don't remember why, but it deeply affected me. I read the book later when I was a teenager. I was surprised, because it wasn't quite the love story I had grown to expect. It was a much darker, stranger, more profound thing.'

However, Arnold's version is nothing like any of the previous screen versions; while the original and previous adaptations focus mainly on Cathy, Arnold tells the story from the perspective of Heathcliff (James Howson).

'When I re-read [the novel] after many years I found myself fretting about Heathcliff,' Arnold says. 'The ultimate outsider ... I wanted to make it for him. The way he was treated as a boy. The brutality. The way he then turns out.'