Gratuitous Bullsh*t?: Review of “Wuthering Heights”

Zoë Paddock

Director-Producer duo Emerald Fennell and Margot Robbie have an irresistible formula. Despite critics calling Fennell’s reimagining of “Wuthering Heights” a “limp Mills and Boon” (The Independent) or “Fennell’s dumbest movie” (Vulture), the cinema was full. For weeks leading up to its release, I had been frustrated by the film’s performative marketing strategy. Robbie (Catherine Earnshaw/ Linton) and Jacob Elordi (Heathcliff) were paraded around on press-junkets world wide as if they were, with every flicker of eye contact and every jovial brush of the knee, on the verge of an extra-marital affair. The anecdote about Elordi following Robbie around like a lost puppy made me wince. I still went. 

It is not overzealous to say that Fennell is a zeitgeist-defining filmmaker. I remember viewing Saltburn on its opening night and watching people walk out of the cinema. They were expecting a Brideshead Revisited-esque romp, but were instead served up a montage of period blood-stained lips, an erotic bath scene, an erotic grave scene, and a not so erotic naked dance scene. For the next few months, Sophie Ellis-Bextor was played at every club. It was vapid. It fetishised the working classes. It seemed to have no discernible allegorical properties. But, oh, Elordi lit like an oil painting in a yellow cotton blouse was too much to look away from.

After the “Wuthering Heights” screening at the  DCA, I heard a woman behind me eloquently say, “What was that gratuitous bullshit. You cannot call that Wuthering Heights.” I agree. It is not Wuthering Heights as we know it, but do we want it to be? 

If you want a bleak, dreich, gritty adaptation, then don’t despair. It has been done again and again and again. I gently nudge you towards Andrea Arnold's 2011 adaptation, which is meant for the literature purists amongst you all. Wuthering Heights is not romantic. It is a tale of generational abuse and humiliation, eclipsed by the final twenty pages when Heathcliff takes a brief respite from torturing everyone to say: “Be with me always —take any form —drive me mad!”

Fennell has defended the film's plot and tonal changes,  explaining that it reflected how she read the book at 14 years old. The film certainly spoke to that. It is aesthetically surreal, decadent and disgustingly romantic. The girl I sat next to giggled relentlessly for what felt like the whole run time. Jacqueline Durran’s costume design was a visual delight. Yes, it was anachronous. Yes, it was garish. But it was a Victoriana fever dream, and when was the last time you had one of those?

When the aforementioned viewer used the word “gratuitous”,  it was in reference to the many erotic scenes that punctuate the film. Some of them were undoubtedly to delight a Bridgerton-loving, Heated Rivalry-obsessed generation. Yet, these scenes were not graphic or full frontal. They relied on the audience's rampant imagination and displayed the frenetic energy between Heathcliff and Cathy. Fennell transposed all the demeaning, generational abuse Heathcliff inflicts in the book into the BDSM-style dynamic of Isabella and Heathcliff’s marriage. Alison Oliver was a revelation in this role; she was a caricature of the repressed book lover with a hard case of bovarysme. She was at once endearing, comical and stifling with her ribbon room and ornate dresses. 

Were Robbie and Elordi up to the task? Robbie’s Cathy was petulant, teasing and emotionally tempestuous. She was not a real person but rather an over-adorned marionette. Yet, that’s what Fennell’s adaptation demanded. Elordi was brooding, physically imposing, and both predatory and protective. His Yorkshire accent was passable but mumbling at times. The real emotional resonance was set up by the younger, and I feel superiorly acted Cathy and Heathcliff: Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper. They created the film's emotional core by laying the foundations for a mutual dependence defined by anguish and tenderness. It was because of Mellington and Cooper, and them alone, that the film reached an affecting crescendo of pathos at its end. 

My advice: give in to Fennell’s creation. You will be entranced against your will.

Image: Theatrical Release Poster for “Wuthering Heights” (Fennell, 2026)