Emerald Fennell is no stranger to tackling the relationships between sexuality, power, and class, as she did in her rather polarizing films Promising Young Woman (2020) and Saltburn (2023). Her latest feature, “Wuthering Heights,” overpromised a feral sexual spectacle, bordering on the suspicion of soft porn, deviating greatly from its source material in a romance defined as one for the ages. With the same stylistic, colorful visuals we’ve now come to know from the writer/director, Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s famed novel delivers moments of camp and gothic aesthetics, leading to a confused, too on the nose, doomed love story.
“BookTok” has made it clear that many think this film is not a faithful adaptation of “Wuthering Heights,” citing, notably, that Heathcliff, played here by Jacob Elordi, is not a person of color in this version. Considering that this film starts off with a whipping, I think it was best that Fennell stuck to what seemed to be her perspective and goal of casting whoever she felt like.
To call this, and truly to critique this, as an adaptation feels like a disservice to both Fennell and Brontë. The director clearly states, as do publicists who insist on using quotation marks in the title, that this is a version of the book, not a reproduction.
“There’s a version that I remembered reading that isn’t quite real,” Fennell said. “And there’s a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so it is ‘Wuthering Heights’, and it isn’t.”
Since this falls into both the real and the unreal adaptation categories, I chose to see it as only an Emerald Fennell film, not a film by Emerald Fennell based on Emily Brontë’s book. I assure you, there is a difference.
“Wuthering Heights” follows the passionate, doomed love story between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Introduced as a child, Heathcliff is Cathy’s built-in pet, brother, and friend after he is brought home by Cathy’s drunk father. In the film, their love story is divided into three parts: growing up together, Heathcliff leaving, and Heathcliff returning. A classic damned from the beginning romance, Cathy and Heathcliff face love, desire, jealousy, obsession, and class dynamics, torturing each other in the process. Brief moments of delicious sexual tension and an original Charli xcx album ensue.
If it wasn’t clear that this was a loose adaptation, the costuming and production design quickly put you on the right track. Undoubtedly, the strongest aspect of “Wuthering Heights” is its gorgeous visuals. Cathy’s dresses alone are masterful works of art, designed by the costume designer Jacqueline Durran. Production design offers gothic darkness at Wuthering Heights and a stylized masterclass in symbolism at Thrushcross Grange, both of which relish in exaggeration. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren crafts beautiful tableaus of characters, making this spectacle lean into the idea of being a fantasy rather than a work of fiction.
Elordi and Margot Robbie, as Cathy, are undoubtedly two of the hottest actors working in Hollywood. Great looking? Yes, but also ridiculously talented. Elordi is a professional yearner, tapping into the same territory as the Mr. Darcys, Conrad Fishers, and Bridgertons of the world. He’s obsessed with Cathy, starting off as a rather familiar character and slowly developing into a sexual deviant. And with his towering presence and unflinching use of his entire mouth, I can confirm that the hype is real, ladies.
Opposite of him, Robbie’s Cathy feels like the caricature we draw of ourselves in the period dramas we read, which is expected, given Fennell’s perspective. She plays almost like a teenager despite Robbie being in her mid-30s. Given that Cathy, in the book, is 18 or 19 years old, Robbie’s casting both feels unintentional and strategic. In a way, Robbie is just a beautiful actress to stand opposite a beautiful actor. Her being older is a breath of fresh air, placing women not fresh out of high school at the same level of desirability and femininity. Mostly, I found Robbie to be proof that Fennell was placing herself in this novel, not a girl reading the book for the first time in high school, but a mature woman revisiting a fantasy that spoke to her and developed.
However, I slowly became sick of Cathy’s over-dramatized characterization, feeling less and less sorry for the selfish, materialistic woman who treated the love of her life like her toy. Despite being a mature woman, she’s spoiled, childish, and also full of trauma, but still manages to feel surface-level. Thus, the casting began to work against the story. Her character fell flat, lacking agency or growth. Worst of all, despite both Robbie and Elordi being equally talented actors and genuinely gorgeous people, there was no real chemistry.
What disappointed me was knowing that Fennell is always willing to push the envelope, yet she fails to do so here. Promising Young Woman took major swings when it came to interrogating rape culture, and Saltburn created a whole new level of kink and freak, exploring sexual infatuation. None of the jaw-dropping or polarizing traits of Fennell’s previous work deeply penetrated her version of Cathy and Heathcliff. After oversimplifying a dense, complex novel, the core romance was force-fed to audiences, making their abuse and obsession with each other neither satisfying nor thought-provoking.
Where Fennell shines is in her two main supporting characters — the sexually repressed Nelly and the sexually curious Isabella, the latter of whom falls into a realm of palatable camp, offering some light in a rather watered-down plot. What I wanted from Cathy and Heathcliff — nuance, exploration, or the shockingly absurd sequences reminiscent of Fennell’s previous outings — was found, barely, in the two.
Surrounded by color, from her dull dress to her sensible hairstyle, Nelly (Hong Chau) lacks sexuality. She held onto a level of hate and jealousy that I can only equate to a woman who is begging to feel desired. Chau was given very little with her character, but her quiet presence and manipulation of the story offered an ounce of genuine wrath needed in this tight cast of morally questionable characters.
Alison Oliver as Isabella is a delight, giving us the best of obsession, sexual exploration, and self-degradation needed in a “Wuthering Heights” adaptation. Oliver is wonderful. Dipping her toes into camp, her desire and fixation on both Cathy and Heathcliff brought back the same twisted, disgusting delight I felt when we watched the grave scene in Saltburn. Both characters gave Fennell the wiggle room needed to remind us that this is more than just a forbidden love story.
When I walked into the theater, I half-expected to watch a two-hour extended soft-porn production after the extravagant marketing from Warner Bros. With the over-indulgent edits of Elordi, Robbie admitting to finding codependency on her costar, and the almost comical inclusion of Charli xcx’s “Everything is Romantic” into the trailers, I found myself actually wanting more, well, sex! Fennell has been known to dive into absurdity, and if this wasn’t going to satisfy the literary fanatics, then satisfy audiences, fresh off of this year’s Heated Rivalry, on Valentine’s Weekend with something more intoxicating than sequences no more suggestive than the allotted “steamy scene” promised on any HBO show. Yes, the two leads delivered sparse moments of excitement, but I yearned for more shock and awe.
If the fantasy isn’t sex, then the fantasy lies in the romance. The trailer said, “Inspired by the greatest love story of all time.” And so, we watch two people love each other so much that they hurt one another and those around them, only for one to perish in the end. Do we women today crave this type of love? Am I supposed to see myself in Cathy? Brontë’s novel carries more weight than this surface-level analysis, finding a poetic way to explore love that transcends all other human feelings — an overwhelming sensation that includes pain. With the strangely barbaric and erotic opening of a hanging, I had high hopes for Fennell’s interpretation. Unfortunately, by the second half, all of this complexity is boiled down to another tragedy, with Brontë’s words being read rather than felt.
Perhaps Fennell is warning us to avoid this type of love. But if we are to avoid the type of damning love between Cathy and Heathcliff, where do I place my sympathy? Am I supposed to feel sorry for a woman who let herself suffer in the name of love, surrounded by people willing to degrade themselves and lose their sense of respect and humanity in the name of love and revenge? Am I supposed to feel sorry for Heathcliff? A man who used sexual degradation to take revenge on the woman he loved? Or do I feel sorry for myself, the viewer, who has yet to truly understand this kind of all-consuming love — a soulmate that also sees the rottenness inside.
The overall messaging is still lost on me. Maybe, as this is a personal adaptation from Fennell’s experience with the novel, the messaging is not meant for any of us. Instead, we succumb to two hours of sitting inside her mind, exploring one woman’s fantasy and perspective. If nothing else, this adaptation is less gentle with the original novel, opting to over exaggerate and find a sense of playfulness. And so this style-over-substance approach leans toward a camp sensibility that I almost found myself fully enthralled by, but then again, the focus on the heterosexual couple compels me not to fully lean into this theory.
It would be a disservice not to give Fennell her flowers for the level of bravery she continues to bring to her films. As a female director, Fennell seems to have no interest in making commercial slop for a dollar, always toeing the line on controversy. And if she were to truly lean into the expected shock post-Saltburn, her work would’ve been taken even less seriously, as Hollywood and critics are typically unkind to female filmmakers who put their sexuality on the screen. Love them or hate them, her films are undoubtedly her own, and it is dismissive not acknowledge the level of power and confidence needed to put that much of oneself onscreen in a patriarchy as brutal as Hollywood — I applaud her and everyone involved.
To criticize this work on the sole basis of whether or not it is accurate to the book is distasteful. So many male directors rewrite history and source materials to conform to their styles and preferences. I see no reason why a female director cannot do the same. Fennell extracted eroticism from a dense piece of classic literature and ran with it, pulling in the SparkNotes versions of characters and plot points. This is not the story Brontë penned, and, frankly, we do not necessarily need copy-paste adaptations of 19th-century novels in hopes of winning over female audiences with a brutish man sporting a long coat and sideburns — as hard as Warner Bros. might try.
And while Elordi’s tongue made a real play for the Oscar and Robbie shed enough tears to fill an Olympic swimming pool, Fennell’s film failed to fully define itself as this generation’s devastating romance. That said, she still delivered something worth watching on a large screen, and I hope she continues to be unapologetically herself.
“Wuthering Heights” does not satisfy any itch from the literature crowd, nor does it fully satisfy audiences looking for corset-ripping, sweat-dripping passion. There are glimpses of eroticism, camp, and gothic aesthetic — and enough polarization to warrant a theater visit — but this version of the classic novel is muddled. Perhaps Fennell went in looking to satisfy her own fantasy, only to come up short after a studio tried to market it as the ultimate sensual period drama. At varying levels of success, I am certain that Emerald Fennell is a voice unafraid to bare it all.
Review Courtesy of Sara Ciplickas
Feature Image Credit to Warner Bros