150 Word Review: 'Wuthering Heights' (2026)
Drama queen
One conceit of director Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is that the 18th century was gross and horny. Correct. Fennell doesn’t take Emily Brontë’s beloved gothic romance about obsession and class very seriously, at least for most of the movie, and that seeming lack of respect is exciting. The movie throbs with kinky, heady passion. Fennell’s inspirations are wide-ranging: Technicolor tearjerkers, Luhrmann, Kubrick, the Coppolas (mostly Sophia).
As our doomed lovers, a poor little rich girl and her servant/brother/bestie, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, tremble with desire and jealousy as Catherine and Heathcliff, but Robbie’s performance is a little too modern for a wild woman who chooses opportunity over love. She still charms. Elordi is an emo brute with sad eyes. And the moors are sexy. Fennell’s ironic spectacle nearly collapses as the climax nears; thankfully, there’s a last-minute dose of sincerity. There are so many gorgeous, surreal tableaus. The leeches!
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It seems like the sort of disemboweling of a literary source that was extremely common in Hollywood during the Studio System era. But instead of a man's man director (Ford, Hawks, Van Dyke, Fleming) overseeing the autopsy of a romantic work of fiction, this time it's being done by a spaced-out woman working more with her own memories than the real story.