Brontë wasn’t on my GCSE reading list, and I’ve never rushed to fix that. Nor have I ever watched any other adaptations (though Buñuel’s and Andrea Arnold’s versions are still on the “one day” pile). So I came to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights with no baggage — just curiosity after a 50/50 run with her: Saltburn left me cold; Promising Young Woman didn’t.
I expected gothic delirium — moors, menace, and feelings big enough to count as weather. What I didn’t expect was it to play like a lavish period moodboard, with a nagging sense we’ve wandered onto some second-hand Poor Things sets: ornate, clever, and slightly too pleased with themselves.
Margot Robbie gives Cathy a brittle spark, and Jacob Elordi sells Heathcliff’s wounded pull, but the film keeps smoothing the mess that should make it hurt. Perfectly watchable. Not much of a haunting.
What left is there to do with a story that’s been told on film so many times ? The answer seems to be to sex it up, create rather OTT fake sets à la Bridgerton, and add a bit of CGI. Bearable, but not much more:
This has got to be the worst ever version of Wuthering Heights on film. Neither of the main characters is the least bit convincing, the atmosphere has nothing of the book or of Bronte country, and the dialogue is wooden.