Is Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights Reaching New Heights?
- Esther
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Emerald Fennell is making noise again with her “exotic”, non-faithful take on Wuthering Heights. Bold, divisive, and impossible to ignore. Did our Film and TV journalist, Esther, enjoy the chaos? Read the review to find out.
Emerald Fennell’s most recent turbulent adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has sent both film and literary critics into the trenches, spiralling and questioning the credibility and creative intellect of our Oxford graduate. Though far from a faithful adaptation of the novel, Fennell’s frisky reinvention crosses into erasure when bold omissions and provocative eroticism of the source have been marketed as a fantasy playground for our star-crossed lovers, Heathcliff and Cathy – essentially a romance story, a whimsical film to watch with your Valentine’s date, when really there are other deeper complex themes that Wuthering Heights addresses.
The opening scene of the film shows us a sliver of Fennell's dark attempts at eroticism, provoking the audience’s sensibility through the ambiguous connotations of agony with intimacy, hinting at an integral theme of the movie–torment. Even though the film deliberately explores notions of love and obsession between Heathcliff and Cathy, such intensity unwaveringly transgresses into torment by blurring the lines of love and hate, which points back to the cycle of abuse and violence as illustrated in the forms of jealousy, rage, inflicting pain upon others and eventually the fuel to their own self-destruction.
Although we acknowledge that the film is not a faithful adaptation of the novel, Fennell omits several essential plotlines to foreground Heathcliff and Cathy’s love story. The erasure of certain characters and alteration of plotlines water down the depth and complexity of the overall plot and character development, failing to embody labyrinthine qualities that could have contributed to resonating with the audience. One vital plotline that ruffled many people's feathers was the complete disregard for the novel’s underlying psychosexual tension between Cathy and Heathcliff. Marked by repression, chastity, and the denial of physical intimacy, that tension is precisely what gives any intimate, embracive moment its emotional and thematic weight it carries in the original text; without it, such moments on screen are rendered far less pivotal.
Addressing The Elephant in Wuthering Heights
The on-screen chemistry between Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi was no doubt remarkably magnetic and passionate. However, the perpetual whitewashing of Heathcliff across the many film adaptations over the century is deeply upsetting, and Fennell’s ignorant casting choice by misconstruing Brontë's critique of such prevalent prejudices, such as racism, is disappointing. It was not only the blatant classism that Heathcliff had experienced in his stay at Wuthering Heights, but it was also the heavy discrimination against his racial ambiguity that moulded him to be this cold, scrooge-like and vengeful person (which Fennell has also failed to capture his villain arc) leading him to be ostracised, ultimately making it impossible for him to be socially compatible with Cathy, even if he was wealthy. Elordi is undoubtedly an exceptional and talented actor; his ability to play a brute is apparent (as we have witnessed his character, Nate Jacobs, in Euphoria), but he is simply not suited for the role. Nothing of his appearance screams “dark-skinned gipsy” and “dark, almost as if it came from the devil”.
Its success in portraying itself as an erotic, tragic love story is misleading, as the film struggles to deliver the moral and psychological heft of Brontë’s novel. The leads are often reduced to sizzling tableaux, replacing moments of deep emotional development and restraint with sexual teasing or, if not, random confessions of love during anti-climactic intimate moments, which act as a futile drive to the plot. The tonal inconsistency contributes to the emotional rollercoaster, with abrupt shifts from heated lovemaking scenes to campy slapstick scenes to heartbreak jumpscares, erasing the depth and complexity of characters.
This stands in sharp contrast to Andrea Arnold's slow remaking of Wuthering Heights (2011), which allows the audience to observe and immerse themselves in the in-depth character development through its raw characterisation of both young and old Heathcliff and Cathy. Substantially, the film lacks any meaningful build-up of tension between its characters; instead, its explosive, volatile moments of heartfelt dialogue feel abrupt rather than earned. It becomes evident that Fennell prioritises shock value over developing genuine emotional depth and narrative substance.
It’s Fennell. Of Course It Looks Pretty.
However, all of this doesn’t erase the compelling visuals Fennell has constructed in this production’s design, including costumes, props, and set. Fennell’s expertise lies in her ability to weave modern sensibilities into an archaic Gothic framework, employing rich symbolism and striking contrasts between vibrant and muted colour palettes with remarkable ingenuity. While also hinting at the reinforcing transgression of desire, emotions and control between characters through various significant symbolisms. Similarly, Fennell utilises stark visual contrasts between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange to reinforce the film’s thematic tensions. The morose, shadowed atmosphere of Wuthering Heights reflects turbulence, chaos, raw emotion, passion, and a sense of untamed freedom. In contrast, the calm, polished aesthetic of Thrushcross Grange embodies social conformity, restraint, and a veneer of cultivated refinement that borders on the meretricious.
Fennell’s spin on Wuthering Heights is definitely an interesting rendition of Brontë’s timeless novel. Despite its directional and narrative shortcomings, it perfectly encapsulates the themes of forbidden desires and the lost art of yearning. Much of the backlash could have been watered down had it not borne the title Wuthering Heights; renaming it Cathy – a retelling of Cathy and Heathcliff's love story from Heathcliff’s perspective – might have allowed audiences to approach it without the weight of expectation attached to Brontë’s work.
Ultimately, the film works best as a poignant cautionary romance if approached with an open mind, or for those who resonate with the excruciating experience of loving someone they know they couldn’t.
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