“Wuthering Heights”
Emily Brontë’s beloved novel is given a raging make-over by Emerald Fennell.
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Literary purists still recovering from the shock of seeing an Australian actress (Mia Wasikowska) play Jane Eyre should give this a wide berth. However, for anybody just looking for a steamy, heart-wrenching good time should find that this pushes all the right buttons. In fact, various directors and actors have tackled Emily Brontë’s psychologically powerful tale of class, passion and cruelty, pretty much from 1920 onwards.
Emerald Fennell, the first British woman to snare an Oscar nomination for best director – for Promising Young Woman (2020) – wanted to recreate the sensation she felt when, aged 14, she first read Brontë’s 1847 novel, to bring that same feeling to a contemporary, younger audience. Which she does with panache. Brushing away the cobwebs of many a slavish adaptation, Fennell has injected a rousing shot of cinematic adrenalin into the material. From the opening credits, over which we can hear some creaking and a man groaning, she broadsides us with a scene of astonishing sexual delirium. And instead of selecting a pair of unknowns to play her iconic protagonists, she has cast two of the sexiest stars on the planet. Margot Robbie – the film’s producer – may not be everybody’s idea of the wild and wilful Catherine Earnshaw, but the camera loves her. And as Heathcliff, the Brisbane-born Jacob Elordi, a smouldering human monolith, should palpitate many a young female heart. In spite of the wind-lashed Yorkshire Dales and scenes of vulgar street life, Elordi more or less carries the weight of the film on his enormous shoulders.
Emerald Fennell, who is not just a director but an actress and novelist, certainly knows her medium. Every frame and every moment is imbued with a sensual richness, that beguiles both the eye and ear. With her knack for the picturesque and telling detail – be it textured close-ups of skin, fabric, teeth, dough, blood and even the slime left by a snail – Fennell serves up a visual smorgasbord of carnal delights. Anthony Willis’s dramatic score is a major asset, too, as are the songs by Charli XCX, which should do no harm to the film’s commercial prospects.
There’s a wonderful cast, to boot, with Martin Clunes outdoing himself as Catherine’s monstrous father, who will lash you to within an inch of your life to prove that, “I am the kindest man alive.” Alison Oliver is a dream as the excitable and misguided Isabella Linton, who brings a welcome dose of humour to her scenes (who knew she could be so funny?), and Charlotte Mellington is a real find as the young Catherine. Perhaps only Margot Robbie fails to make one forget that we are actually watching Margot Robbie, and not a Yorkshire lass deranged by the lust she feels for a man deemed beneath her. Sometimes you can just be too famous for your own good.
Of course, it is no more an exact facsimile of the original story than the film biography of Emily Brontë, Emily (2022), was a precise record of the novelist’s life, albeit a haunting distillation of the Brontës’ world, sublimely directed by the Australian actress Frances O’Connor. And talking of Australians, Baz Luhrmann’s truncated, distorted take on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – every bit as visually inventive as Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” – has now been completely revalued. The Australians seem to have a knack for breathing fresh life into quintessentially English subjects, but please don’t mention Peter Rabbit. For now, though, we should prize Emerald Fennell as a national treasure.
Cast: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell, Charlotte Mellington, Owen Cooper, Vy Nguyen, Vicki Pepperdine, Paul Rhys.
Dir Emerald Fennell, Pro Margot Robbie, Emerald Fennell and Josey McNamara, Screenplay Emerald Fennell, Ph Linus Sandgren, Pro Des Suzie Davies, Ed Victoria Boydell, Music Anthony Willis, songs by Charli XCX, Costumes Jacqueline Durran, Sound Jason W. Jennings and Samir Foco, Dialect coach William Conacher.
MRC/Lie Still/LuckyChap Entertainment-Warner Bros.
136 mins. UK/USA. 2026. UK and US Rel: 13 February 2026. Cert. 15.
