Wuthering Heights review: too hot, too greedy adaptation

Emerald Fennell cranks up the campery as she reinvents Emily Brontë’s tale of Cathy and Heathcliff on the windswept Yorkshire moor as a 20-page fashion shoot of relentless silliness, with bodices ripped to shreds and a saucy slap of BDSM. Margot Robbie’s Cathy even slips off to the moor for a hilariously intimate moment, while Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff broods and mutters in his distinctive “Yerrrrrkshire” accent.

The film’s title appears in inverted commas, a postmodern flourish that often feels pointless. Fennell reshuffles the novel’s elements: she abolishes Hindley and reassigns his ruinous boozing and gambling to Mr Earnshaw, who, on a whim, rescues a streetwise boy from Liverpool and adopts him as Cathy’s step-brother.

Owen Cooper plays the young Heathcliff and the pair run ferally together, yet as adults their feelings remain unconsummated or unacknowledged.

England, Yorkshire

wuthering heights, emerald fennell, emily brontë, margot robbie, jacob elordi, heathcliff, cathy, yorkshire moor, mr earnshaw, liverpool