Cathy’s blush signals what she cannot say in the new ‘Wuthering Heights’

In Emerald Fennell’s new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, Margot Robbie’s Cathy is almost constantly flushed: redness rises in her cheeks whether from sexual pleasure, annoyance, grief, envy or shame. Makeup designer Siân Miller leaned into that involuntary tell — “Flush is this amazing physiological thing — it’s hormonal,” she said — drawing on pre‑Raphaelite portraiture to enhance emotions that the characters won’t admit aloud.

Complexion charts emotional shifts across the film. Isabella, played by Alison Oliver, begins with a prim pink on the apples of her cheeks that reads youthful and artful; as she succumbs to Heathcliff’s seductions her color darkens, until a flush spreads across her neck and chest, slick with perspiration, in scenes that mark her transformation.

For Cathy, blush signals movement between two worlds. At Thrushcross Grange Ms.

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