The Reel Review
Catherine must reconcile her feelings for Heathcliff, a gypsy orphan whom she’s known and loved since childhood, with her desire for financial security from the wealthy new neighbor and his naive ward. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star in Emerald Fennell’s bold, loose adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 novel.
Fennell’s way more modern and sexual take on the romantic drama (featuring music from Charli XCX) is as heavy on style and visual splendor as it is light on substance. Highlighting the dreary brutishness of life on the Yorkshire moors of early 1800s England, Wuthering Heights explores primal themes of love, jealousy and self-destructive obsession. Hong Chau (The Whale, Downsizing), Shazad Latif (Magpie, Star Trek: Discovery) and Alison Oliver (Saltburn, Conversations with Friends) round out the cast respectively as Cathy’s meddlesome maid Nelly and the wealthy neighbor Edgar Linton and his ward Isabella. Owen Cooper (Adolescence) is the young Heathcliff.
There is a seemingly endless array of sweeping cinematic vistas and beautifully shot moments but the overly repurposed story peppered with vulgar moments (including some BDSM) sacrifices emotional heft for a more carnal vibe, with Robbie and Elordi failing to make their unlikable main characters really connect with the audience. The result is a beautiful but painfully long bore that feels more like a long music video than a romance. After two really good films from Fennell, this one sadly is a miss.
REEL FACTS
• Margot Robbie produced Emerald Fennell’s first two feature films, 2020’s Promising Young Woman and 2023’s Saltburn before co-starring in 2023’s Barbie, in which Fennell played Barbie’s perpetually pregnant friend Midge.
• Alison Oliver and Jacob Elordi played adult siblings in Saltburn.
• “Wuthering Heights” is the only novel by English author Emily Brontë, the fifth of the six Brontë sisters, among them Charlotte, author of the famed 1847 novel “Jane Eyre.”
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