I have to admit, I didn’t know much about the book Wuthering Heights. I knew it had a guy named Heathcliff in it and was written by Emily Brontë, but that was the extent of my knowledge going into Emerald Fennell’s latest adaptation.
This is Fennell’s third film, and man, what a track record. Her 2020 debut, Promising Young Woman, was terrific, and 2023’s Saltburn proved it was definitely not a fluke. Her latest, starring Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as the aforementioned Heathcliff, is much wider in scope and proves what a powerhouse writer-director she is. I’d honestly bet that if she were a man, she’d be receiving even more praise than she already does.
The film opens with a young Catherine’s father (Martin Clunes)—a drunk who spends more time gambling than with her—bringing home a young boy to live with them. Catherine (an excellent Charlotte Wellington), thrilled to have a companion, immediately names him Heathcliff (an equally excellent Owen Cooper, who just won an Emmy for Adolescence) and makes “civilizing” him her personal project.
Cut to years later: they’re now young adults, clearly in love but both afraid to admit it. Wuthering Heights, the estate they’ve lived in for years, has slowly fallen into disarray to match the father’s dwindling bank account. When a neighbor moves in “next door” (it’s five miles away, but still), the whole house, including longtime ward Nelly (Hong Chau), gets excited. Curiosity gets the best of Catherine, and she goes spying on the new residents only to get caught by Edgar (Shazad Latif), the very rich and very single owner of the neighboring mansion.
Edgar quickly falls in love with her, because, of course, he does, and Catherine must decide whether to marry into wealth or stay home with Heathcliff. In a pivotal moment, she confesses to Nelly that although she loves Heathcliff, they are destined for poverty, and she refuses to “degrade” herself like that. Little does she know, Heathcliff is eavesdropping. Devastated, he packs his bags and vanishes.
With only one option left, wedding bells soon follow. After a time jump, Heathcliff returns, now much more handsome and, for reasons we never quite find out, wealthy. He buys the dilapidated Wuthering Heights, and once Catherine finds out he’s back, their love affair finally begins.
That’s when the story shifts into psychological warfare with a heavy dose of Fifty Shades of Grey… stuff I didn’t think even existed when Brontë originally wrote the novel.
Robbie is hands-down excellent here. She plays a spoiled brat who turns into a conniving harlot, yet you still want her to win and find true love. She’s never been better. Elordi is good as well, but honestly, you never really get a sense of what’s going on inside him besides his obsession with Catherine. Late in the film, he marries Edgar’s sister, Isabella (Alison Oliver), and he’s just so mean and evil to her. It feels like it comes out of the blue, and I couldn’t quite get a handle on that shift in his character.
Still, Fennell’s direction is wonderful, as is her choice in music from Anthony Willis’s score to the Charli XCX tracks.
