\u2022 Emerald Fennell \u2014 inside the wild world of the Wuthering Heights director<\/a><\/p>\n Back to Isabella, though, who is the heiress of the swanky Yorkshire mansion Thrushcross Grange and an enthusiast of BDSM practices that include canine-themed submission and stuff with chains. This is, obviously, a striking departure from the novel, yet appropriate for an adaptation that arrives with ironic quotation marks around the title. Literary pedants be warned: there is maybe 10 to 15 per cent of the original narrative in the movie, while the rest belongs to Fennell\u2019s reimagined and self-described \u201cfever dream\u201d. It is, at best, Bront\u00eb adjacent but with a naff dollop of the Fifty Shades of Grey author EL James. <\/p>\n Isabella eventually falls for the swarthy, dominant Heathcliff of neighbouring, gloomy Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff has spent a water-treading opening act enjoying topless wood-chopping and photogenic mid-distance scowling before flouncing off huffily into the wilderness when his lifelong crush, Cathy, accepts the marriage proposal of the rich toff Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif).<\/p>\n Heathcliff soon returns, however, showcasing a fabulous new tan and a pirate-themed glow-up (earring, gold tooth etc). Fennell\u2019s glossy pop-promo aesthetic worked wonders for the satirical Saltburn (remember Barry Keoghan\u2019s climactic nude boogie?) but too often here she simply plonks Elordi before the camera, cranks up the tunes (mostly Charli XCX) and seemingly hopes for the best. She has doomed Elordi with a fatally shallow characterisation, recasting Heathcliff as pouty man-candy with a shaky Yorkshire accent and, by chuffing \u2019eck, an alarmingly overexposed tongue.<\/p>\n \u2022 Wuthering Heights \u2014 by the stars who tried to sex it up before<\/a><\/p>\n Yes, there is no person or inanimate object safe in a film where Fennell\u2019s main directorial note to Elordi seems to have been, \u201cGreat, but can you also lick it?\u201d And so with titter-inducing idiocy this Heathcliff \u201cerotically\u201d licks the wallpaper in Cathy\u2019s bedroom, he licks her cheek when she\u2019s attempting to cry and, worst of all, in a sequence that\u2019s pure David Attenborough, he licks the length of her neck like a gecko working diligently through a string of dried crickets. This, remember, is a character who once dug his dead lover out of the ground with his bare hands (sorry, in the book, not in the film) but here commands only an egregious loss of credibility.<\/p>\n Cathy isn\u2019t much better. Robbie is 35 and her age might have been an insurmountable issue had this been a good-faith adaptation (the literary Cathy is a teenager). But here it\u2019s only mildly perplexing, prompting questions about why Cathy only began flirting with Heathcliff in her thirties. <\/p>\n Robbie with Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton<\/p>\n WARNER BROS<\/p>\n \u2022 Here\u2019s why the film of the book is always a disappointment<\/a><\/p>\n More importantly, Robbie is an imposing actress and her costumes, from the designer Jacqueline Durran, are impressive. But her Cathy lives entirely on the surface like Bront\u00eb Barbie and never burns from the core like, say, the Cathy of Merle Oberon (from the 1939 version), or like Emma Mackey in the brilliant Emily (2022), there playing Emily Bront\u00eb but simultaneously, and this is the point, playing Cathy.<\/p>\n The rest of the film is equally imprecise. The production design is ramshackle \u2014 a bit of brutalism here, a bit of Tim Burton there, some location shooting and lots of ugly CGI. And the ending is hobbled by a shamefully trite \u201cbest bits\u201d megamix. <\/p>\n Still, Oliver\u2019s Isabella is a hoot and a bright light. She even winks to the camera as if she\u2019s in on the joke \u2014 as if she knows it\u2019s awful. Two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman<\/p>\n Make Wednesday your go-to cinema day. Each month Times+ members can bring a friend for free at Everyman on a Wednesday. The perfect cinema experience with plush sofas, a full bar and great food. Visit mytimesplus.co.uk<\/a> to find out more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who knew Isabella Linton was the best character in Wuthering Heights? She is in this vapid Bront\u00eb adaptation,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":{"0":"post-458990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Margot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/3953ffb3-9a2e-4412-8d8a-3fabdaa6ae06.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606\u2606
15, 136min
In cinemas from Feb 13<\/p>\n