There are dozens, if not hundreds, of photos of Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, and everyone else involved in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights at the Paris premiere on February 2. They’re all full glam, and they’re all standing in front of a step-and-repeat that reads “Hurlevent.” The first time I saw it, embedded into a joke tweet, I thought it was some kind of typo. Or maybe a Photoshop. “Hurlevent”? What are you talking about?
“Hurlevent”: Is that like when you watch 28 Years Later? Is it some kind of French adjective that’s like, “This movie is so emotional you’ll cry until you yak”? Even so, why would the cast and crew of the film take photos in front of a random word and not, say, the title of the film? These questions, while well-intentioned, proved very stupid: The cast and crew of Wuthering Heights are standing in front of the word “Hurlevent” because Hurlevent is the French title of Wuthering Heights. Has it been this way since the 19th century? Seems like it. It’s definitely been this way since the Jacques Rivette adaptation of the novel called Hurlevent came out in 1985. All this time, we’ve been living in a Hurlevent world and haven’t even known it. So much for globalization.
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“Hurlevent” is quite a literal translation of the title of Wuthering Heights, a phrase that amounts to “howling wind.” The original title of the book refers to the manor in which most of the novel takes place — a dreary Yorkshire house beset by terrible winds. I’m glad we all learned something from this experience, like when the BAFTAs made it known that the U.K. title for Zootopia 2 is Zootropolis 2 (“Zootopia” is trademarked by a zoo in Denmark). “Hurlevent” is proof that learning is a lifelong activity: You’re never too old to learn the title of a book in another language or to misuse that title in order to describe a time you threw up a bunch.
