It is probably not quite how Emily Brontë imagined Wuthering Heights when she was writing it in Yorkshire almost 200 years ago.After reports that the latest film adaptation of the classic novel, starring Barbie’s Margot Robbie, will “lean hard into depravity” the trailer does not disappoint with an array of erotic imagery set to a Charlie XCX soundtrack.Emerald Fennell, the director, has eschewed a period drama interpretation in favour of a style more akin to Saltburn, her erotic breakout film from 2023.Ahead of the release of Wuthering Heights on Valentine’s Day under the tagline “Come Undone”, the 90-second teaser features Robbie, 35, as Catherine Earnshaw fantasising about her adopted brother Heathcliff, who is played by Jacob Elordi, 28.A bare-chested Heathcliff appears on all fours, his scarred back drenched with sweat as Robbie’s bodice heaves, before she is revealed to be daydreaming. Her thoughts have been triggered by hands erotically kneading bread dough and egg yolks.The charged scene is followed with clips of Robbie gasping as her corset is aggressively tightened by a maid, alongside close-up flashes of chewed lips, blindfolds, whips and restraints.“Do you want me to stop?” asks Heathcliff at one point. “No,” a breathless Earnshaw replies.A soundtrack of original songs by the pop star Charlie XCX underscores the film’s contemporary tone, while a younger version of Heathcliff will be played by the 15-year-old Adolescence actor Owen Cooper.Louise Tutt, the deputy editor of Screen International, the film industry magazine, welcomed the refresh as a “brilliant move” that young audiences would not be able to resist.“It’s exactly what we have come to expect from Fennell,” Tutt said.“A straightforward traditional adaptation of Wuthering Heights would really struggle to find anybody that wants to go and see it at a cinema. But this take is cinematic, exciting — and youthful.”Tutt said that Warner Bros Discovery, the studio behind the film, had been “really savvy” in securing Charlie XCX’s songwriting services, while she expects it to also benefit from massive amounts of marketing hype on social media.“It’s virtually critic-proof,” she said. “Even if the film itself turns out to be somewhat uneven it will still be a must-see for younger audiences on Valentine’s Day. They will want to make sure that they are a part of the conversation and will pay to go to see it at the cinema.”While she was confident that older audiences will also turn out if the film is well-received critically, there was a limited amount of sympathy for any purists who may be disappointed by the radical retelling.“There will be those that clutch their pearls and are very alarmed but it’s a sexy book and literature and art is meant to evolve with audiences,” Tutt said.It will not take long for people to realise that they are in for a very unique ride. (Alex Farber)
After the trailer dropped on Wednesday and confirmed our suspicions (think whips, corsets, and fingers in mouths), it’s clear that to some, the prospect of a disturbingly horny onscreen adaptation of Wuthering Heights is not only on brand but a dream come true—an opportunity to give life to the darkly erotic undertones Brontë was arguably forced to veil and repress due to the Victorian mores of her time. “They going full on bodice ripper with this one. Feels like an erotic period drama...not mad at that idea,” wrote one redditor. But for many, this felt like the ultimate betrayal—sullying a timeless classic that clearly didn’t need overt sex scenes to captivate audiences for nearly two centuries. “WTH???!!!” said another commentor online. “This is 50 Shades of Bridgerton style distortion of a Brontë novel.”Recent dispatches from preliminary test screenings of Fennell’s Wuthering Heights also suggest the audience response was “mixed” due to the film’s “polarizing” and “hyper-sexualized” imagery. World of Reel, a hub for alt movie news, called the adaptation “a deliberately unromantic take on Brontë’s novel, stripped of emotional nuance and full of salacious detours that serve shock value.” Whether the idea of those shocking and salacious detours has you totally turned off or all the more eagerly anticipating the film’s 2026 release, I think it’s safe to say we’re all in for another rousing round of sex scene discourse when Wuthering Heights premieres early next year.Much of said discourse has centered around the question of whether sex onscreen is narratively “necessary” in any given movie or TV show. If a sex scene fails to meaningfully advance the plot in the eyes of a certain kind of vocal and very online critic, it’s typically panned as “gratuitous”—unnecessary fluff at best, if not actively “problematic” in its sexual explicitness.For those who think sex scenes must justify their existence and excuse their obscenity by proving themselves load-bearing plot points, a sexed-up adaptation of an iconically sexless 19th-century novel is the most defenseless of offenders. How could a sex scene possibly be necessary if it wasn’t even part of the original narrative? These chaste literary precursors to the romance genre are easily weaponized by the anti-sex-scene set against the sex-forward nature of modern romantic media in general.These days, sex and romance are practically synonyms. If you identify as a lover of “romance” novels, everyone knows you like your literature on the spicy side. But Jane Austen didn’t need all that sex to tell some of the greatest love stories of all time, did she? These enduring classics and their apparent lack of sex lend themselves all too easily to the suggestion that maybe romance was better—more romantic, even—before we made it all about sex.For those of us with higher sex scene tolerance levels, it’s easy to roll our eyes and chalk this preciousness up to conservative sex negativity and trad-wifey nostalgia for an era of less liberated sexual mores. But I’m here to suggest there’s something more interesting at play. Maybe the resistance to spicing up 19th-century classics isn’t a sign of Gen Z sex-phobia. What if we are not a generation of prudes but a generation of discerning consumers? Maybe it’s just that we prefer our sex scenes with a healthy dose of yearning, as we love to say online.And if ever there were a classic tale of yearning, it’s Wuthering Heights—a story of lovers so star-crossed, the romantic tension preserved by their thwarted love defies even death and they literally pine for eternity. And the thing about yearning is it tends to precede sex rather than accompany it. To yearn is to desire—and it may just be better than the actual sex itself.Therein, I suspect, lies the real crux of the angst some viewers may feel regarding the prospect of an overtly sexual Wuthering Heights. Less anti-sex squeamishness and more subconscious desire to suspend the eroticism of wanting sex that actually having it can’t help but quell.Culturally, sex is often positioned as a consummation, an ending. This is evident even in the language we use to describe the act: to orgasm is to “finish,” or, in the infamous French euphemism, to die “the little death.” Historically, to “consummate” a marriage was to make it official by doing the deed—to sign, seal, and deliver that marriage contract with a bang. Jane Austen may not have needed sex to tell a great love story, but the “marriage plot” her work pioneered—a literary device that continues to inform everything from romance novels to rom-coms—always ended with a wedding…and with it the unspoken implication of sex. Our romantic leads are finally wed, and now we can assume they’re off to the real…finish.This tension—the “will they, won’t they” that makes up most marriage plots—is the part of the story that gets our blood pumping. There is an eroticism to this anticipation, one that mirrors the literal horniness that precedes actual sex. So much of sexuality is not the act itself but the desire for it, the wanting more than the having. Because once you have it, it’s over—not unlike a book you raced breathlessly to the end of only to wind up disappointed now that there’s no more of it.Perhaps, on some level, a discomfort with sex scenes is less reflective of a puritanical aversion to sex than a desire to suspend the horny anticipation of it, to stave off the disillusionment that comes with realizing that getting the thing you want means you no longer get to want it. That maybe yearning for it was the best part after all. This is arguably the central tragedy of human existence: You can’t want what you have. More than we yearn to be sated, we yearn to yearn.Perhaps discomfort with sex scenes is a desire to suspend the anticipation.And if there’s one novel that embraces this central tragedy, it’s Wuthering Heights. To some anxious Brontë fans, then, the idea of potentially watching Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi fuck onscreen as Cathy and Heathcliff next year may feel like a betrayal of the ever-unresolved sexual tension that is the lifeblood of Wuthering Heights. Maybe the erotic undercurrent of the novel that some hope—and others will hate—to see brought to life on the big screen can only maintain its sexual charge as long as it remains unearthed and unfulfilled.There’s only one way to find out. Personally, I’m not mad at a sexy Wuthering Heights. Lest we forget, Twilight was something of a horny take on Wuthering Heights that eventually inspired even hornier fan fiction in the form of Fifty Shades of Grey—so I think we can all rest assured that whatever erotic subtext Emily Brontë may or may not have woven between the lines has already been cashed in on in much less integrity-of-the-text-honoring ways than whatever Emerald Fennell is likely up to.But if you still find yourself involuntarily clutching your pearls at the idea of sex scenes adulterating an adapted work of classic literature, maybe you don’t actually hate sex; maybe you just love to yearn.
“Fifty Shades of Grey” has met its raunchy match.Some viewers are in disbelief over the trailer for Emerald Fennell’s 2026 Valentine’s Day movie “Wuthering Heights” that includes many erotic scenes.The film, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, adapts Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel about two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors.But the trailer, released Wednesday, focuses more on the sexual relationship between Robbie and Elordi’s characters, Catherine and Heathcliff.The minute-and-a-half video, played to the Charli xcx song “Everything is romantic” from her album “Brat,” shows Elordi, 28, sucking Robbie’s fingers twice, as well as someone placing their finger into a fish’s mouth.After the trailer went live, fans took to X to express their shock over the NSFW footage.“Just saw the teaser for #WutheringHeights and it is way worse than I expected… is it me or is it giving soft porn vibes..?? smh,” one person wrote.“Not everything needs to be porn adjacent,” another account wrote. (Eric Todisco)
Wuthering Heights fans are up in arms at 2025’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s revered 1847 gothic novel, which has taken a somewhat erotic turn.Featuring original songs by Charli XCX, Saltburn’s Oscar-winning director Emerald Fennell’s first trailer just dropped, causing an almighty emotional crater for 19th century romance purists.It’s, erm, raunchy alright. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi didn’t hold back in their lustful depictions of willful Cathy and tortured Heathcliff, as the teaser trailer showed much heavy breathing, sweaty skin, and fingers in mouths – including a peculiar moment in which a forefinger was seemingly erotically (we think?) placed in a dead fish’s open gob.It’s going to be an experience, that’s for sure – and knowing Saltburn, not innocent early dating Valentine’s Day fodder.Initial reviews of the artistic direction of Wuthering Heights have caused an almighty uproar, with many fans wishing the whims of 2025 hadn’t touched this sacred gothic text with a barge pole.‘The way this didn’t need to be a Wuthering Heights adaptation, like girl if you wanted to make a horny period piece then do that. No need to terrorise Emily Bronte,’ wrote @sshxniaa on X.‘Emily Bronte is rising from her grave as we speak because why did they turn Wuthering Heights into Fifty Shades of Heathcliff and Cathy,’ said @daehaerys.@witcheyre said: ‘Wuthering Heights has been transformed into a modern-day 50 Shades of Grey (with body horror involved). This gives me physical pain!’‘I wish I did not live to see the day Wuthering Heights, a beautiful gothic novel about the cycle of generational trauma with themes of race, class, religion, mental illness, abuse, etc., was adapted into a white washed dark romance booktok bodice ripper with a hyperpop soundtrack,’ added @lynchianbush.People will likely be flocking to the cinemas to see it, despite initial reservations, as @ellieleaks admitted: ‘Liking every Wuthering Heights hate tweet even though i’ll probably be seated why lie.’The film also stars alongside Oscar nominee Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, BAFTA winner Martin Clunes and Ewan Mitchell.In August it was reported that – in true Saltburn fashion – an initial first screening of the unfinished film left many shocked.(Saltburn is famed for its provocative content, which includes extreme sexual content, disturbing scenes of nudity and liberal smatterings of violence and gore). (Kitty Chrisp)
I traveled by plane and train and bus and foot, halfway across the globe, just to visit the setting of one of my favorite books, which I have read and underlined and written in more times than I can count.But the degree of my love for this masterpiece Emily Brontë gave us (before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 30) doesn’t translate into a rabid protection of its source material. I’m not outraged that Saltburn’s Emerald Fennell is taking a less than completely faithful interpretation for her upcoming remake, especially knowing that franchises like The Twilight Saga and 50 Shades Of Grey got their starts as fanfic inspired by the novel’s epic love triangle between Cathy, Heathcliff, and Edgar Linton.People who drooled over Stephanie Meier’s vampires and werewolves, or hid E.L. James’ BDSM 101 novel under a different book jacket for their morning commute reading may have had no idea of the connection to Wuthering Heights, but Fennell is paying transparent tribute to the original, as well as the horny fanfic loop its inspired, by giving us a version that feels like an 80s or 90s smut novel with Fabio on the cover, but with decidedly modern cinematography and music by Charli xcx. Slated for a Valentine’s Day 2026 release, there’s a prime opportunity here to spin-off “Brat Summer” into “Wench Winter” for the corset-filled event.Australians Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi will bring literature’s most toxic duo to life as Cathy and Heathcliff, and Fennell’s teaser trailer is as sexually charged as you’d expect her Saltburn follow up to be. Bread dough and egg yolks have never been this X-rated, and heaving chests and horse bridles suggest we’ll see a lot of scenes that were not part of the original text. I could not be more here for it.But if you do know anything about the book and the shock it caused for its dark themes and digging up of graves, this story becomes so obviously perfect for Fennell to tackle, and I think Brontë herself would be pleased that someone who deeply understands the same psychological and economic themes that inspired her almost 180 years ago is reinterpreting her story for a new audience and continuing to push boundaries to shock and awe the next generation.Check out the visual and auditory feast of a teaser trailer for yourself below! I promise it will have you “wuthering” in more ways than one… (Nicole Stawiarski)
In true Emerald Fennell style, the trailer has already divided viewers. Anita Singh of The Telegraph shared the teaser of the film on X and wrote, 'this is so many kinds of wrong, I don’t know where to start.' Another X user wrote, 'I haven't seen it and will withhold ultimate judgement until I have, but everything I've seen and heard, down to this trailer and even the bloody release date, make me increasingly suspicious that this will be my most hated film of all time.'However, others cannot contain their excitement. 'Emerald Fennell is the only director that can get me excited to watch another erotic thriller,' wrote one X user. Another penned 'lowkey excited for wuthering heights…. (i’ve never read the book and have no idea of the plot it just looks pretty).' 'A third wrote 'I'm actually excited about the Wuthering Heights remake. I grew up on BBC adaptations so I don't care if it's faithful to the book because there are already dozens of those. I wanna be titillated and scandalized.' (Alice Hall)
On the film’s artwork shared on Lucky Chap’s Instagram, we see that the novel and film’s title is in quotation marks, as “Wuthering Heights”. In the trailer, we hear that the soundtrack has been penned by the queen of brat, Charli xcx, who is known for her own unique way of thinking and creating through vulnerability and subversion. These intentional choices suggest that this adaptation has no intention of remaining historically accurate to the original text. But instead of crying at the apparent loss of the ‘true’ story, we should be celebrating what might turn out to be an additional genius take on the original work.And what does ‘original’ even mean, anyway? Sure, it can mean to have been the first or earliest form or something. But it can also mean to have a fresh, never-been-done-before take on something that already exists. It’s this originality that will continue to bring old stories into new eras – breathing new leases of life into them, making sure they last and aren’t lost for generations to come.Wuthering Heights took years to become a classic novel. But perhaps this reimagining of a classic story will become a classic of its own. And perhaps Emerald Fennell, like Catherine, is someone who burns too brightly for this world right now. But when one of the most toxic love stories in history is released on Valentine’s Day next year, I’m sure we’ll see her solidify herself, once more, as one of the modern storytelling greats. (Emily Ash Powell)
Every teenage girl that gets into Victorian literature is assigned a Brontë sister to relate to. There are the Charlottes, who love their passionate and plain heroine in Jane Eyre and the mad first wife stalking the attic. And then there are the Emilys, who worship the deliciously messed up, pseudo-incestuous doomed love affair between Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.Personally I’m a Charlotte, so I know better to rile up the Emilys. But Emerald Fennell doesn’t seem to care, as her film adaptation of Wuthering Heights continues to infuriate fans of the book. If they were already furious about the casting and the set photos, the teaser trailer (which dropped last night) has sent them into an orbit of apoplexy.Wuthering Heights is arguably a pretty effed up book and the trailer suggests Fennell is taking some freaky Saltburn-style swings. But not in the direction fans had hoped. Let’s unpack the main offences: [...]It’s a really sexy trailer in a very gross (complimentary) way. There’s lots of eroticised bread kneading, yolk fondling, and people putting their fingers in each other’s mouths. At one point someone pokes a digit into a frozen fish orifice. Elordi is all shirtless and sweaty, Robbie has a lot of bosom heaving going on.Corsets are tightened (against bare skin, a big no-no from a historical costume perspective!) and bodices ripped. Someone — maybe the character of Isabella — is being walked like a dog, while horse bridles and whips are being cracked out in a rather BDSM manner. Some people are grousing that it all seems very BookTok Romantasy.Wuthering Heights is also a very horny book, but in a Victorian sense where it’s all subtext and longing. Although, come on, at one point Heathcliff digs up Cathy’s body (still preserved in all it’s sexiness thanks to the moors) because he wants to be buried next to her: “I'll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I'll think it is this north wind that chills me ; and if she be motionless, it is sleep.” Given Fennell already has a film with some grave sexy time, those passages will probably get some artistic licence taken to them in the adaptation. (India Block)
Here's the important thing you've possibly missed: the new movie isn't titled Wuthering Heights, but "Wuthering Heights." Immediately, this means we're not actually dealing with Brontë's story but another that's loosely inspired by it, meaning creative freedom can run amok.There's obviously a solid argument here that Fennell's vision will be lacking something by not tapping into the social and cultural criticism that Brontë's novel holds, namely around race and class. Cathy isn't a blonde 35-year-old woman without a Yorkshire accent, and Heathcliff isn't a buff twentysomething white guy who's previously been Elvis Presley and Frankenstein.However, if we must have another Wuthering Heights remake – and to be clear, I don't think we need more at all – I want it to be completely different to anything we've seen before. I want it to take us to new places, challenge us in new ways and offer something to the cinematic canon that distinguishes it from the swathes of reboots we've seen before. (Jasmine Valentine)
‘Come undone’, the billboard reads. Two hands are clasped together. On another a blonde-haired woman lies prone on a fuzzy peach mattress, her hands tightly gripping the sheets. ‘Drive me mad’, implores the caption. In theatres Valentine’s Day 2026.Despite appearances, this isn’t the latest boilerplate steamy romance for women to drag their boyfriends to in February, but the official marketing for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. The trailer, released on Thursday, sets the tone for an apparent massacre of Emily Brontë’s magnum opus.It opens with a shot of Aussie heart-throb Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, sucking the fingers of erstwhile Barbie Margot Robbie while her not-insubstantial breasts heave out of an anachronistic corset. Almost every one of the following clips suggests we’re in for a bodice-ripping thriller, replete with horse whips, numerous instances of Elordi stripping off, and Cathy being cut out of her dress. All set to the soundtrack of ‘Everything is romantic’ by pop star Charlie XCX. In the only lyrics given we are told to ‘fall in love again and again’. What was wrong with a bit of Kate Bush?The official theatrical release poster shows Heathcliff cradling Cathy’s head in a perfect rip-off of Gone with the Wind. Except this isn’t Gone with the Wind. This is not a historical romance, but the film adaptation of a story about psychological and physical abuse.Maybe this explains why the title of the film appears on the poster in scare quotes. This isn’t a Wuthering Heights that any reader would recognise – an adaptation in name only. What on earth is going on? Granted, it’s impossible to reach a final verdict before Fennell’s film hits the silver screen. But test audiences certainly haven’t been impressed.Kharmel Cochrane, the casting director, already let that on after confirming at the Sands film festival that ‘there’s definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy’. After all, it’s ‘just a book’, she shrugged. ‘Just a book’ it may be to her. But if the original text is so wildly unimportant to Fennell and Cochrane, then why are they adapting it? I’m sure ‘Fifty Shades of Grey but make it Georgian’ would have sold perfectly well. Nothing was stopping Fennell from making a film about how good Jacob Elordi looks with his shirt off. She’s undoubtedly a talented film-maker, as proved by the success of Saltburn two years ago.Why do directors claim that they are ‘adapting’ novels that they clearly loathe?Instead, it seems Fennell has channelled her creative instincts into a disturbing exercise in pointless destruction. Heathcliff is not the sort of identikit Christian Grey-esque bad-boy love interest found in your latest Romantasy stocking filler – a damaged but fixable man. He is a raging psychopath. Readers will recall that at one point he hangs Isabella Linton’s dog in front of her in a show of dominance and then strongly implies he’d like to see her meet the same fate. He kidnaps Cathy, the woman he loves, holds her hostage and forces her to marry his son.Fennell’s butchery is part of a wider trend. The last decade has seen numerous directors shamelessly adopt period novels in title alone. There was Netflix’s Persuasion, which read more like a Sex and the City remake than anything Jane Austen penned. Then there was Steven Knight’s BDSM-infused take on Great Expectations, which was almost unrecognisable as an adaptation of Dickens.Why do directors claim that they are ‘adapting’ novels that they clearly loathe? Clearly, Fennell came to Wuthering Heights with her own ideas for a story. Casting the 35-year-old blonde Margot Robbie to play the teenage Cathy seems to prove this. Has Hollywood become so unimaginative that production companies don’t trust themselves to sell an original film? Do they need to hang their marketing efforts on Emily Brontë’s good name to flog tickets? Audiences have been quite clear: they like original period dramas. Look at the success Bridgerton received. And no genre-defining authors or classic novel were harmed making it.If Fennell wants to tell a story of wild sex and falling in love that will make readers ‘come undone’, then I’m sure there are thousands of screenplay writers who would have sold her one. But as Madeline Grant has already begged Hollywood: please leave our period dramas alone! (Lara Brown)
The sad literary girls are in uproar. The focus of our outrage? The one-and-a-half-minute trailer for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights movie, which arrived online on Wednesday with all the subtlety of, well, a trailer for an Emerald Fennell movie.It’s the moment many Emily Brontë fans had been dreading ever since set photos emerged featuring Margot Robbie as Catherine, wearing a flouncy puffball of a wedding dress that looked more Eighties Sloane Ranger than 18th century, and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, grinning with a gold tooth. And somehow, this brief teaser manages to be even worse than we’d imagined. I haven’t felt so personally attacked by a literary adaptation since Dakota Johnson started Fleabagging to the camera in Netflix’s assault on Jane Austen’s Persuasion.Elordi’s Heathcliff seems to have been reimagined as one of the hulking male models who appeared on the cover of pulpy romance novels back in the day, all long hair, abs and brooding glances. There’s music from Charli xcx (Brontë meets Brat? It’s a no from me). The colour grading has been amped up so that many of the settings resemble hyper-stylised music video backdrops. There are a lot of fingers being stuck into mouths, or into dead fish (Fennell is not one to shy away from turning subtext into screamingly obvious text).Wuthering Heights is getting the Saltburn treatment – with shock tactics and more-is-more aesthetics replacing any real substance. Frankly, the trailer is every devotee’s worst fears come to life, soundtracked by “Everything is romantic”. It is, as one X (Twitter) user rather scathingly put it, “the matcha Dubai chocolate labubu of film”, a strange farrago of on-trend components (Jacob! Margot! Charli!) that seems to have been perfectly calibrated to rage-bait the internet rather than, you know, actually do any justice to the original.Why does it feel like such an affront? After all, bad film adaptations of literary works aren’t exactly rare. And, in theory, Wuthering Heights is “just a book”, as the film’s casting director Kharmel Cochrane put it when defending her choice of lead actors earlier this year; the decision to cast Elordi as Heathcliff, who is described in the book as “dark-skinned”, has proved to be another major point of contention, one that some reckon will flatten the nuances and complex dynamics of the original.But calling Wuthering Heights “just a book” underestimates just how strong a grip Brontë’s story still has on readers almost two centuries on from its publication. It’s a novel that inspires a rare kind of devotion, especially among female fans. There’s a cult around Emily’s one and only book that vastly exceeds the fervour inspired by her sister Charlotte’s most famous novel, Jane Eyre, and certainly outstrips the fandom for the underrated Anne. And with that adoration comes a protectiveness over this bleak marvel.Perhaps it’s down to the fact that many of us were introduced to the story of Cathy, Heathcliff and their appalling families when we were in our teens. It’s a text that often crops up on the GCSE and A-level syllabus, sure, but it’s also the perfect literary accompaniment to the sort of big, messy feelings that come with adolescence. When you tune into the book’s emotional frequency at that impressionable age, it’s impossible to resist. Once you’ve aged out of those heightened moods and melodramas, though, it’s subtle and rich enough that you can still find more in the story; the “A” plot of the tormented lovers becomes just one part of an often harrowing tapestry of generational trauma.This version looks all style and precisely zero substanceBut what also makes us Wuthering Heights lovers just so defensive about our sacred text is the fact that it’s so frequently misunderstood. Fennell’s odd cocktail of anachronisms and BDSM overtones isn’t the first time that the book has been misconstrued. It’s often referred to (usually by people who’ve only really listened to the Kate Bush song) as a sweeping love story, but the reality is much more complicated. It’s a book about class, family, and what happens when you’re brought up on the very edge of civilisation. That’s why it feels almost painful to see Fennell about to flatten it out into a story about two very photogenic people having some vaguely subversive sex in barns. I can’t put it better than the Twitter user who damningly wrote: “Emily Brontë is rising from her grave as we speak, because why did they turn Wuthering Heights into Fifty Shades of Heathcliff and Cathy?”Of course, I’m not proposing that obsessively accurate films are the only way to go. Andrea Arnold’s 2011 take on Wuthering Heights, more of a mood piece than a straightforward telling of the story, proves that you can truly summon up the heart of the book without hanging on to Brontë’s every word. But an adaptation has to stay true to the original’s spirit in order for that playfulness to work – and this version looks all style and precisely zero substance.Just like Saltburn, this Wuthering Heights seems designed to be clipped up and commented upon on TikTok. Perhaps getting so irate about her trailer is just playing into Fennell’s hands. Maybe this is all an elaborate attempt at trolling self-serious literary types with earnest opinions about which Brontë sister they’re most like. But still, it’s enough to make me (and, I presume, plenty of other Emily fans) want to climb out onto the wily, windy moors and scream into the void. (Katie Rosseinsky)
Let’s just preface every single thing I’m about to say by saying that if Emerald Fennell has no critics then I am dead. This is not to say I am an out and out hater. I gave Promising Young Woman five stars and thought it was a revelation. I gave Saltburn three stars, and thought it was an absolute mess but still kinda fun. Next up, we have Wuthering Heights – starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie – and to this I am more than seated for whatever nonsense Fennell serves up. A lot of criticism towards Emerald Fennell and her extremely privileged upbringing and maximalist filmmaking is both deserved and endorsed by myself – but watching the outrage at the trailer for Wuthering Heights is boring me to tears. We all know it’s going to be imperfect, but to say it’s going to be anything less than entertaining is simply delusional.Bring back fun!One tweet compared the announcement that Wuthering Heights by Emerald Fennell “will feature new original songs by Charli XCX” as “Wuthering Heights starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi featuring Charli XCX on the soundtrack is kinda the matcha dubai chocolate Labubu of film”. This not only really made me laugh at its brain rotted astuteness but also just made me muse over the fact that this is precisely why this film is going to be a hoot.I am not coming to Emerald Fennell taking on Wuthering Heights with Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie to the song stylings of Charli XCX for authentic and serious period drama adaptation. And if you are, why? You could just literally watch any number of adaptations of Emily Brontë’s novel to get your fix. This is for those of us who want to remortgage our home to pay for a big popcorn and Ice Blast and have our brains rubbed by overstimulating ridiculousness. Yes I WOULD like to see corsets tightened whilst feeling like a 365 partygirl. (...)I believe trials at The Hague should have occurred for whatever Barry Keoghan was attempting at a Scouse accent in Saltburn, but I’m letting directors and filmmakers off for using bangers for period pieces. I would like to kindly remind the world that this film is being made as a romp and not something to play in a museum as an accurate visual representation of life in the 19th century.I do not know or particularly think that Emerald Fennell is making a good film with her Wuthering Heights adaptation. But what I will defend is a director’s right to make a pile of garbage. At the end of the day, some films are made for us to smile and kick our feet off the cinema chair to and disassociate for a few hours. Whether Brontë is turning in her grave over the fact Margot Robbie is wearing red sunglasses in this adaptation is between her and her god.I for one choose to not be boring. (Harrison Brocklehurst)
Period drama fans looking for a gripping costume piece should try this ITV mini-series based on a timeless novel, after a Brontë drama has been enjoyed by others and also a Shakespeare adaptation.The two-part drama came out in 2009 and received praise from viewers on IMDb at the time.One person gave the programme a 10/10 review and commented: “A beautiful, dark adaptation of the novel Being somewhat (!) obsessed with the novel, I've watched every adaption of it going and this is undoubtedly my favourite.”A second person titled their review: “A captivating adaptation” and explained: “There have been several adaptations over the years, for my money, this is the best of them all.”A third person titled their review: “Beautifully done adaptation of a very complicated book.” (Neela Debnath)
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