As novels go, Wuthering Heights has enough going on for a whole series of adaptations. What modern audiences expect - deranged passions on the wild and windy moors - is only a part of the action. One of the better jokes in this latest movie adaptation comes when Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) returns after years away as a wealthy man, and then just sits around smirking and refusing to say where the money came from. Nobody watching really cares about any of that background stuff: get back to the brooding and smooching, post haste.
It all began years earlier at gloomy Wuthering Heights, when the drunk dad (Martin Clunes) of Young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) brought home a waif (Owen Cooper) that she promptly named after her dead brother Heathcliff. Cathy's former bestie, Nelly (Vy Nguyen), a mix of companion and servant, is rapidly stuck in a "Friendship ended with Nelly, now Heathcliffe is my best friend" nightmare while the near-feral (at first) boy and the somewhat extroverted girl run riot.
Years pass, their bond grows, and while they both kind of sort of understand that getting married is not the done thing, they are also sneaking around watching the servants have vaguely BDSM sex using whatever's handy in the stables. Can masturbation out on the moors be far behind now that Cathy has grown into a young woman (Margot Robbie)?
Things eventually come to a head when the wealthy new neighbour, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif) and his somewhat quirky sister Isabella (Alison Oliver) spot Cathy hanging around the other side of the fence - well, lying on the ground, as her spying has resulted in a minor injury that requires them to take her in for a number of weeks. Not long after she returns he proposes, and she explains to Nelly (Hong Chau) that look, while Heathcliff's a great guy, marrying him would be beneath her... and the eavesdropping Heathcliff storms off before hearing the part where she says she will always love him. Oops.
Years pass with no sign of Heathcliff, Cathy settles in to her new home while her drunken loser father boozes away what little money he has, and then suddenly Heathcliff is back with an earring and he's bought Wuthering Heights. Of course, there is no way he and Cathy can get back together, especially when he decides it'd be fun to marry Isabella and chain her up like a dog. With her consent, of course - Heathcliff might be arrogant and tormented, but he's also very big on consent.
Things continue to happen, but at some point it's hard not to notice that the wind seems to have gone out of Wuthering Heights' sails. Director Emerald Fennell (Saltburn) never quite figures out where all this is going, leaving this as little more than a collection of scenes that often work but sometimes don't, and then it just fizzles out in an ending that wraps things up just at the point where (if you know the novel, or even the Kate Bush song) things should be getting interesting.
Nothing here is remotely realistic, and yet it never quite leans into embracing the excesses of the story. It's not quite a YA adaptation, but it's nowhere near as transgressive as it likes to think it is. The opening scene is young Cathy and Nelly sniggering at a hanged man's erection, and it doesn't get much more mature than that; a later scene where we get a lengthy plot synopsis of Romeo and Juliet suggests that was as much inspiration as anything else.
Worse, the emotional extremes are largely watered down: Heathcliff glares and smirks and wears black a lot (unless it's raining, then it's time for clingy white shirts) but he's no threat emotionally or physically, while at worst you'd call this Cathy flighty - though the constant disapproval of Nelly tries to suggest she's a fool to herself and a menace to others.
Both Elordi and Robbie give good performances, but both seem oddly restrained. Their roles should play to their strengths; Elordi was excellent in the recent Frankenstein, playing an even more brutish and tortured Gothic lead, and Robbie's work as Harley Quinn had an unpredictable quality that would have been handy. Here they make for a convincing couple but not much more - they match each others' energy, but that energy never really spins out of control.
These are hardly fatal flaws, and there is a lot of good in this adaptation. But its strengths are scattered throughout, coming through in isolated moments (the juxtaposition of Heathcliff's scars from childhood beatings with Cathy's bare back being laced into a corset) and stray glances. It's pitched as a story about a love that could not be denied, an overwhelming passion that swept aside everything in its path; it ends up being just two people groping each other in the back of a car*.
- Anthony Morris
*okay, a stagecoach parked on the moors. Considering the couple are sneaking around at the time, it seems fair to ask: did Cathy drive it out there? It wasn't Heathcliff, as he's the one who gets out and walks away.
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