Words by JANE CROWTHER

Designed to titillate with its tongue very much in its flushed cheek, Emerald Fennell’s raunchy take on Charlotte Bronte’s doomy classic sets its stall out from the opening as a hanged man gets an erection, prompting carnality from the assembled crowd – including a shuddering nun. Death and sex continue to be inextricably linked in this tale of two Victorian pseudo-siblings who run wild on the Yorkshire moors and through each others’ dreams as they grow from children to cruel adults locked in a toxic romance. Jettisoning the novel’s bookended story of the fate of the family home, Wuthering Heights, and the generational trauma of the Earnshaws, screenwriter and director, Fennell concentrates on the lethal enmeshment of Cathy (Margot Robbie) and her adopted brother, Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) which sees them devouring each other in the rain, masturbating on rocky outcrops and smearing fingers through any wet thing they can find (snail trail, damp dough, a gelatined fish mouth, blood). 

Designed in narrative and production aesthetic as a heaving Mills & Boon cover come to life, Fennell’s iteration has no interest in historical accuracy, Victorian properness or faithfulness to the source. Like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, this version of Wuthering Heights is more interested in vibe and feelings. So while Charli XCX’s anachronistic soundtrack thrums over the visuals-destined-to-be-memes, Heathcliff and Cathy pant over each other in deliberately artificial and heightened environments from Suzie Davis that will enrage purists but provide content for TikTokers. Wuthering Heights looks like a tiled abattoir, Thrushcross Grange belonging to third wheel love interest, Edgar (Shazad Latif, bringing real depth to a cock-blocked cuckold) is a pop music video dollhouse (scarlet lacquers floors, flesh walls, lurid gardens), a moors sunset is an atomic orange. And the costumes… Jacqueline Durran’s imagination is unfettered: a Gone With The Wind gown, a busty milkmaid get-up, neon ribboned fripperies for ditzy Isabella (Alison Oliver), a wedding night outfit that wraps Cathy like a boiled sweet. Put it this way, there’s plenty to go at for Halloween hot looks.

While the willful artifice will surely attract awards attention, the relationship at the (raging) heart of this tale needs to convince and Fennell is predictably unphased by making her characters complicated, messy. Cathy, in Robbie’s hands, is an intriguing OG drama queen, a prick tease, a brat. As he did in Frankenstein, Elordi does considerable heavy lifting in humanising a damaged man; seducing Cathy and audience alike with a spot-on West Yorkshire accent, palpable yearning and a mean streak a mile wide. If anyone needed more evidence that Elordi is destined to be a generational great, Wuthering Heights demonstrates his ability to play convincingly into lusty tropes (the way he says ‘I know’ at one point is likely to rival Colin Firth’s lake swim or Matthew McFadyen’s hand flex in bodice-buster obsessions) but also tap into the psychology of Heathcliff (Fennell’s most modern and interesting scene is a moment of consent in a coercive relationship) and almost single-handedly sell the the tragedy of the piece. When he mourns the love lost while wind-whipped on the moors or clings to a silk bedsheet like drowning man, the truth and authenticity of Bronte’s prose is captured.

Flashy, brash, bombastic, hot and heavy – this Wuthering Heights is like no other, fully committing to its horny-teen concept with all the headlong passion of a ‘handsome brute’ falling for the wrong girl. On that level alone it’s worth seeing and debating. And as they say in Yorkshire: where there’s muck, there’s brass…

Pictures courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Wuthering Heights is in cinemas now