Wuthering Heights review: Fennell's provocative, perplexing romance

Emerald Fennell made clear from the start that her "Wuthering Heights" is not Emily Brontë's novel, and she has leaned into that choice. The director kept quotation marks in the film's title, courted controversy with the casting of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and pushed anachronistic flourishes—from a dance-pop soundtrack teaser by Charli XCX to production stills showing latex-like dresses, shimmery negligees and rose-colored glasses.

Fennell herself said, "I can't say I'm making Wuthering Heights... any adaptation of a novel, especially a novel like this, should have quotation marks around it." The movie preserves the basic outline: Catherine and Heathcliff meet as children on the Yorkshire moors, she marries the proper Edgar Linton, he runs away and returns wealthy to unsettle her life.

But familiar plot points sit inside a very different tone, one that often reads more like The Princess Bride than Brontë. That tonal shift weakens the romance.

United Kingdom, Yorkshire moors

emerald fennell, wuthering heights, margot robbie, jacob elordi, charli xcx, yorkshire moors, edgar linton, heathcliff, adaptation, dance pop