'Wuthering Heights' review: Jacob Elordi, Margot Robbie shine in swooning, steamy update
Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw in “Wuthering Heights.” Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
PLOT A headstrong girl and an orphaned boy form a powerful bond that may doom them both.
CAST Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Alison Oliver
RATED R (strong sexual content)
LENGTH 2:16
WHERE Area theaters.
BOTTOM LINE Swooning, steamy and more than a little kinky, with hot-blooded performances from its two ravishing stars.
Who better than UK provocateur Emerald Fennell to write and direct a new adaptation of "Wuthering Heights," Emily Brontë’s feverishly erotic romance from 1847? What Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier couldn’t dream of doing on screen in William Wyler’s 1939 version, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi do, and then some. Liberally reworking Brontë’s narrative while also uncovering the hidden kink in her prose, "Wuthering Heights" delivers a well-timed Valentine’s Day weekend fantasy with just enough art-house affectation to elevate itself above mere bodice-ripper. Although it’s that, too.
Fennell states her thesis in the opening scene: a public hanging that sends the gathered crowd into a near-orgiastic frenzy. Sex and death now firmly connected, she turns our attention to young Cathy Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington), her hot-tempered father (a memorable Martin Clunes) and his latest charity case, the orphaned Heathcliff (Owen Cooper, of Netflix’s "Adolescence"). The young actors do solid work here, establishing a tender bond we won’t forget, while an excellent Hong Chau ("The Whale") adds new complexity to the role of Nelly, the Earnshaws’ housekeeper.
Initially, Robbie and Elordi play Heathcliff and Cathy as overgrown adolescents: playful, hurtful, barely aware that they’re sliding toward financial ruin. After Cathy agrees to marry her wealthy new neighbor, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), a furious Heathcliff rides off into the night — a great Hollywood moment, complete with dying sunset and Anthony Willis’ mournful score. He returns transformed into a gentleman, just as Cathy is now a rich man’s wife. The two leads really shine in these scenes: Elordi grows more brutish in his expensive suit, while Robbie keeps her ladylike poise in the most compromising positions. The Games Heathcliff and Cathy play now have real consequences, and Edgar’s sheltered sister, Isabella (a terrific Alison Oliver), might make a convenient pawn.
This is the third film from Fennell, the button-pushing, visually audacious auteur behind "Promising Young Woman" and "Saltburn." Those films felt calculated to shock, but "Wuthering Heights" feels like it comes from Fennell’s heart (or at least her libido). She really indulges her inner Ken Russell here, staging scenes of bestial foreplay, zeroing in on anything remotely suggestive (flowers, bread dough, snails) and even decorating one room with wallpaper the exact color of Cathy’s skin (with veins, yet).
"Wuthering Heights" occasionally feels like a music video thanks to the anachronistic pop songs of charli xcx, the pastrylike costumes by Jacqueline Durran and the fanciful visual touches (like a fireplace made of dozens of porcelain hands). It all adds to the heightened effect, but it’s the two lovers’ raw emotions that stay with us. "Whatever our souls are made of," Cathy says in one of Brontë’s most famous lines, "his and mine are the same."
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