Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” begins with a sexually charged public hanging.
Needless to say, it’s obvious from the opening seconds anyone who missed the memo from the horny trailer will quickly understand that this version of the English classic will take some liberties. That’s what those quotes around the title are for, after all. Book purists may be annoyed — Fennell takes some pretty big swings, especially in the back half! — but everyone else will have a blast watching Catherine and Heathcliff torture each other for ever after.
Starring Margot Robbie (who also produces) and Jacob Elordi as the doomed obsessives, the film, in theaters nationwide beginning Friday, February 13, also stars Shazad Latif as the romantic rival Edgar and a hilarious, winning Alison Oliver (Saltburn, Conversations With Friends) as Edgar’s weirdo ward, Isabella.
As viewers will remember from English class, the story follows poor Cathy, trapped in the 1800s Yorkshire countryside with an alcoholic father. When he takes in the orphaned Heathcliff, the two (in their younger years played by Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper) become confidantes, and that pseudo-sibling love grows into an all-consuming obsession as adults. In Fennell’s capable hands, the film is an exploration of desire in all its grimy, gritty, gross glory.
Fennell occasionally wants to shock viewers by the sheer too-much-ness of the pair’s passion — pig’s blood, voyeurism — as they stalk each other across the moors, but while she succeeds in creating some fun, kinky moments you’ll surely message your group chat about, it’s actually more restrained than some of her work in previous films such as Saltburn and Promising Young Woman. That’s despite the fact that (spoiler alert!) one major change from the source material is having Cathy and Heathcliff consummate their relationship. Repeatedly.
The larger takeaway here is simply what a pleasure it is to watch a bombastic period drama with such lush, beautiful production values and a truly stellar cast. With an assist from some Celtic-y pop tunes by Charli XCX, the movie is moody, depraved and, yes, romantic as it jumps between the literal world and a more stylized fantasy.
One of Fennell’s most inspired decisions is her sense of place, whether that be the vast, rain-drenched moors where a lot of Heathcliff and Catherine’s action transpires, or the estate in which Catherine later lives — stunning, but also filled with not-so-literal details like flesh-like wallpaper or giant statues made up of dozens of hands. When obsession is all consuming, it bends your very reality. Baz Luhrmann and Manderley would be proud.
Robbie and Elordi attack the material and each other with relish, ensuring they’ll become the touchstone versions of these characters for a new generation of viewers: mean and rude and sad and hopeful. The film seems poised to make Elordi, especially, a much bigger star and to launch him even more fully into an internet obsession.
There’s a scene when Elordi lifts Robbie with only one hand by her literal bodice strings as a prelude to a romantic moment. (The woman next to me gasped.) It’s the kind of charged GIF that aspires to long internet memory like a certain hand flex in 2005’s Pride and Prejudice.
But of course, Emily Brontë is a long way from Jane Austen. Fennell, who also wrote this adaptation, clearly wants to use Brontë’s story to show a bombastic version of doomed love. She has said she took the parts of the classic that spoke to her and excised the rest. If that means Heathcliff sometimes skews more romantic hero with a secret than committed torturer and life-ruiner, or large sections of the original plot are exchanged for Isabella exploring some BDSM tendencies, something powerful and real about yearning remains; the way a feeling can override anything, bubble up and take over your thoughts and house and way of life, even as it utterly destroys.
There is little joy to be found in the duo’s tragic existence, but Robbie and Elordi’s sizzling chemistry ensures open-minded audiences will be happily haunted long after the credits roll.
