Like Michael Jordan and most big screen adaptations of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s sole novel, Fennell says, \u201cFuck them kids.\u201d This version only focuses on the first half of the novel, jettisoning the part about the next generation and how the cruelty and misery just keeps on going as Heathcliff is haunted by the memory of his lost love. Fennell\u2019s film bears the slightest resemblance to the classic. Major characters are gone or elided into others\u2014no one liked Hindley Earnshaw anyway\u2014but it also takes liberties with the ones who remain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fennell begins with Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) and Heathcliff (Owen Cooper) as kids, growing up in the same sad household after Cathy\u2019s drunk gambler of a father (Martin Clunes) rescues Heathcliff from abuse on the street only to abuse him at his new home of Wuthering Heights. But in the drafty house on the moors, Heathcliff at least has the company of Cathy. But she\u2014like the movie\u2019s soundtrack creator Charli XCX\u2014is brat, and she treats her ostensible best friend like dirt while she craves time with him. When the pair grow up without necessarily maturing, they\u2019re still inseparable, until Cathy (Margot Robbie) announces her intentions to marry their rich neighbor Edgar (Shazad Latif) to her companion, Nelly (Hong Chau), and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) overhears and loses his mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By casting Elordi as a character who the book describes as \u201cdark-skinned,\u201d this Wuthering Heights <\/em>ignores race, one of the central reasons why Cathy and Heathcliff can\u2019t be together. It also disregards Bront\u00eb\u2019s explorations of gender and skims over discussions of class. Instead, it devotes all of its copious energy to the commingling of pleasure and pain, both physical and emotional. Wuthering Heights<\/em> begins with what sounds like a sex scene, all heavy breathing and squeaking, but it soon becomes clear that we\u2019re witnessing violence. Almost everyone here enjoys inflicting cruelty, witnessing others\u2019 cruelty, or being the object of that cruelty. It\u2019d be a bit of a bummer, except that it struggles to elicit any real emotions because we cannot care about these people. <\/p>\n\n\n Instead, it\u2019s mostly sick, slick fun, with the slickness coming from more than just Fennell\u2019s adoration of viscous substances like raw eggs, slug slime, and various bodily fluids. It oozes style in the shots composed by cinematographer Linus Sandgren, capturing these characters in crepuscular light as they traipse across the moors. Catherine\u2019s dresses (designed by Jacqueline Durran) are lush, lusty scarlet velvet, and it\u2019s easy to get your breath stolen by production designer Suzie Davies\u2019s work, particularly a red lacquer floor set off by a white fireplace adorned with ivory hands. It\u2019s gothic and glorious, and every bit of it looks fucking gorgeous, even beyond all the pretty people on screen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sure, Elordi is dreamy, and Robbie is enjoyably unbalanced, but the real MVP honor goes to Saltburn<\/em>\u2019s Alison Oliver as Isabella, Edgar\u2019s ward (his sister in the books). She\u2019s equally childlike and unhinged, and the actress earns a laugh almost every time she\u2019s on screen. Geraldine Fitzgerald was nominated for the role in William Wyler\u2019s 1939 version, but Oliver is doing something totally new and it\u2019s a deranged delight to experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Fennell\u2019s characters (and make no mistake, these are hers, not Bront\u00eb\u2019s), the Saltburn<\/em><\/a> and Promising Young Woman<\/em> director also isn\u2019t sure where to draw the line between pleasure and pain. Wuthering Heights<\/em> seesaws between misery and enjoyment, and Fennell inflicts each wantonly. Do not go into this expecting a straightforward adaptation of one of the greatest novels of the English language; instead, it\u2019s enjoyably trashy, like a dogeared mass market romance novel, extra worn in a couple of sexy scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Wuthering Heights” is in theaters this weekend. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/wuthering2-1024x576.jpg\")
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