by Tim Gordon
Emerald Fennell, Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi Ignite a Bold Gothic Romance
Some stories arrive with ghosts already in the room.
Before a single frame of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights unfolds, the film carries the weight of literary canon and cinematic repetition. Emily Brontë’s novel has been adapted for the screen at least seven times, each version staking its claim on the moors. Those earlier interpretations linger in the cultural air, shaping expectations whether consciously or not.
Which presents a peculiar dilemma for this reviewer.
Having experienced only a limited number of those prior adaptations, I found myself navigating this film with an incomplete map. Too familiar with the narrative to approach it as new, yet not immersed enough in its full cinematic history to measure just how far Fennell is diverging from tradition. That lack of breadth clouds the evaluation. You sense rebellion. You sense reinterpretation. But without a deep bench of comparisons, it becomes difficult to gauge whether Fennell is redefining Wuthering Heights or simply intensifying what was always there.
Even so, taken on its own terms, this adaptation is anything but timid.
Fennell approaches Brontë’s tale not as a delicate relic but as a volatile emotional ecosystem shaped by obsession, class resentment, and desire left to rot in open air. This is not a corseted romance built on longing glances and restrained yearning. It is raw, tactile, and unapologetically erotic.
The story centers on Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, raised together in the isolation of the English countryside. From childhood, their bond feels less like innocent companionship and more like possession. Cathy is impulsive, imaginative, and fiercely alive. Heathcliff is quiet, watchful, and already carrying the weight of outsider status. Together, they form a connection that is immediate and inseparable.
They do not simply fall in love. They fuse.
But society intrudes. Catherine is groomed for respectability and advantageous marriage. Heathcliff’s lower station renders him an impossible suitor, no matter the depth of their attachment. When Edgar Linton offers stability and comfort, Catherine accepts, choosing security over the wild truth of her feelings. It is a decision that fractures them both.
Heathcliff disappears, only to return years later hardened and wealthy, carrying vengeance like a second skin. What follows is less romance than emotional reckoning, as their unresolved passion seeps into every corner of their small community, corroding marriages, loyalties, and lives.
Margot Robbie delivers a Catherine who is restless, contradictory, and fully embodied. She allows Cathy to be selfish, tender, cruel, and painfully human. There is no attempt to sanitize her choices. Robbie makes clear that Catherine understands the cost of her actions even as she barrels toward them.
Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff resists romantic mythmaking. He begins as restrained and observant, gradually calcifying into bitterness. Elordi plays him not as a swoon-worthy antihero but as a man warped by rejection and class cruelty. When he returns, he feels sharpened, colder, almost predatory.
Their chemistry is combustible. Not soft or lyrical, but urgent and physical.
Fennell leans into that physicality. Unlike more restrained adaptations, this Wuthering Heights foregrounds sensuality and emotional degradation. Desire here is unruly and destructive rather than aspirational. The erotic undercurrent is explicit and deliberate, extending into scenes of degradation and squalor that underline how obsession corrodes. It is a continuation of the provocative sensibility she explored in A Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, now filtered through gothic tragedy.
Visually, the film trades traditional period polish for texture and immediacy. Interiors feel worn and suffocating. The moors stretch wide yet oppressive, less postcard than battleground. Everything appears touched by dirt, sweat, and consequence.
Hong Chau’s observant Nelly Dean grounds the narrative amid the emotional chaos, while Shazad Latif’s Edgar Linton offers a gentle counterweight to Heathcliff’s volatility. Alison Oliver’s Isabella becomes a tragic casualty, her suffering presented without romantic gloss.
And yet, the lingering question remains.
How radical is this interpretation within the broader lineage of adaptations? How much of Fennell’s approach is truly revisionist, and how much is amplification?
Without a fuller immersion in the previous seven versions, that answer feels just out of reach. The judgment feels partial, shaped by a limited frame of reference. There is a sense of incompletion, of evaluating a storm without having witnessed all its earlier formations.
Still, Fennell earns the benefit of the doubt.
Her Wuthering Heights is bold, confrontational, and uninterested in nostalgia. It refuses to soften Brontë’s themes or render them palatable. Instead, it leans into obsession, class cruelty, and erotic volatility, trusting the audience to wrestle with its discomfort.
It may not be definitive. It may not fully settle within the long lineage of adaptations. But it is alive, dangerous, and unapologetically modern.
And sometimes that is enough to weather the storm.
Grade: B-
