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On the wily, windy moors: Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie in Wuthering Heights. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Wuthering Heights, directed by Emerald Fennell, is in cinemas now.<\/p>\n
As an English teacher by day, it\u2019s embarrassing to admit my acquaintance with Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s romantic classic Wuthering Heights extends only as far as the Kate Bush song. So, I took along an expert.<\/p>\n
\n Luckily, it\u2019s my colleague\u2019s favourite
\n novel of all time, and I loved all of Saltburn director Emerald Fennell\u2019s previous films. As for her highly charged take on the self-imposed tragedy of Cathy and Heathcliff? It thrilled us both.\n <\/p>\n
Australians Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi adopt impeccable English accents from across the social and economic divide, as the upwardly mobile Catherine Earnshaw and adopted ruffian Heathcliff, respectively. Actually, before we meet them grown up, it\u2019s young Adolescence star Owen Cooper who is rescued off the street by Cathy\u2019s drunkard father (a terrific Martin Clunes) to be raised in their family. It\u2019s here that the soulmate co-dependency in these two youngsters is sown, such that when Robbie and Elordi take the screen as adults \u2013 all plunging necklines and sultry glances \u2013 it\u2019s clear that this pseudo-familial relationship can only go one way. And that way gets very sexy indeed.<\/p>\n
A best original screenplay Oscar winner for her excoriating fable Promising Young Woman, Fennell takes liberties with her adaptation of Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel by amalgamating a couple of characters and portraying the couple\u2019s destructive passion with shades of sado-masochism. Although this may disturb some purists, Bront\u00eb\u2019s Biggest Fan was not at all troubled, noting that Fennell\u2019s version sticks to the spirit of the story, even when straying into far-flung and fantastical interpretations that are entirely in keeping with its essence.<\/p>\n
When Heathcliff marries flighty ing\u00e9nue Isabella out of spite (a hilarious performance by Alison Oliver), one cleverly written scene uses the source novel\u2019s original dialogue in a shocking new context.<\/p>\n
Fennell also employs what we used to call \u201ccolour-blind casting\u201d but now take as normal. There has been uproar that Elordi \u2013 a white Australian of Basque heritage \u2013 isn\u2019t dark-skinned like the written Heathcliff, but here we have a Thai, Nelly Dean (Hong Chau), as the embittered servant, while Cathy marries a British-Pakistani, Mr Linton (Shazad Latif).<\/p>\n
Does it matter? Not a jot. The chemistry between the doomed lovers is completely convincing, the soundtrack is as bombastic as befits Cathy\u2019s relentless self-centred hysteria, and although the story cuts a lot out and still goes on a bit long, it\u2019s a devastating cautionary tale about placing money over love.<\/p>\n
Passionate, eccentric, sumptuous and daring, it\u2019s sufficiently thrilling to entertain a novice like me, while according to the delighted aficionado, who rereads the book every couple of years and has watched all the previous screen versions, it\u2019s \u201cthe best adaptation ever\u201d. <\/p>\n
Rating out of five: \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u00bd<\/p>\n
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Copy LinkEmailFacebookTwitter\/XLinkedInReddit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Review by Sarah Watt Film reviewer\u00b7New Zealand Listener\u00b7 12 Feb, 2026 12:00 AM3 mins to read Sarah reviewed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[13182,37637,42897,11908,156,156857,11945,409,111,139,425,69,90,156856,18843,223,21146,303,148981],"class_list":["post-279693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cinemas","tag-directed","tag-emerald","tag-english","tag-entertainment","tag-fennell","tag-heights","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-now","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-sexy","tag-teachers","tag-the","tag-verdict","tag-very","tag-wuthering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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