Wuthering Heights is for the horny girls – we don’t need a man’s opinion

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is undeniably horny – but it’s also devastatingly emotional, pushing period dramas further into a new era that’s far more unhinged and romantic than Bridgerton.

As the director of the deliberately provocative Saltburn, there’s been much pearl-clutching from purists over this adaptation after Fennell insisted there was ‘enormous amounts of sadomasochism’ contained within the novel’s pages and fans dubbed the raunchiness of the trailer ‘50 Shades of Brontë’.

But Wuthering Heights has been reinterpreted more to stir souls than to shock and titillate (although it does that too), softening some of Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff’s (Jacob Elordi) monstrousness to allow them to be redeemed more by their doomed love.

They’re still pretty awful characters, we just spend more time revelling in their yearning and primal lust.  

As Fennell has already warned with her inverted commas in the title, this is an interpretation, led by how the book made her feel at 14. She has certainly recaptured the giddiness of being a dramatic teenager, swept up by big emotions.

This one is truly for the girls and our desires; the female gaze is evident – and welcome.

It is also risqué – there is swearing, BDSM and far more sex than your usual staid period drama – but Fennell has struck the right tone for that to work. And let’s not forget the book is totally wild too, just in a less bodice-ripping way.

The bold changes chime with 2026’s tastes towards darker romances, even if it’s totally unfaithful to the book in how it delights in red latex dresses, face gems and a Charli XCX soundtrack. It’s costume and production design porn for the girlies and not pretending to be grounded in historical reality. 

As someone not particularly attached to the original Emily Brontë book, I fully welcome this daring, looser interpretation; we have many others offering a more loyal take, but this does something new and unexpected with it.

It has spirit, style and soundtrack to truly obsess over with its beautifully melded collaboration between Charli XCX’s synth-pop and Anthony Willis’s more classical yet pulsating sound.

Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper ably set up the story as the young Cathy and Heathcliff, who meet when Cathy’s father Mr Earnshaw (a darkly comic Martin Clunes) brings him home as ‘a pet’ for her.

Earnshaw’s character has been combined with his son Hindley from the novel, making him a temperamental alcoholic who throws up his dinner, wees up the wall and soils his britches. He insists he’s the ‘kindest man alive’ while walloping seven shades out of Heathcliff for protecting Cathy.

When older, Cathy and Heathcliff torment each other – but the sexual tension and unspoken desire bubbles as Heathcliff asks her not to throw herself at new neighbour Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), to save the family from ruin.

But Cathy is seduced by the Linton home, manicured, hyper-colourful and bathed in permanent sunshine. It represents the world she has always felt she deserved, alongside the handsome and openly-devoted Edgar (far more robust than in the novel) and his awkward but enthusiastic ward Isabella (a scene-stealing Alison Oliver).

The chemistry, crucially, is undeniable between Robbie and Elordi, who engage in slapping, finger sucking and a lot of sloppy kissing – and that’s before we get to the sex either, because they are certainly having it in this film. In fact, there’s an entire montage.

Elordi is excellent as Heathcliff, inspiring some empathy and personifying the brooding anti-hero of many a young woman’s fantasies (his fans will need their smelling salts when he picks Robbie up by her bodice with one hand). However, it’s a missed opportunity – and disingenuous not to mention – to have whitewashed this rare period romantic lead written as a person of colour, which would have added more layers back into both his character and a love story set in the nineteenth century.

Robbie is good as Cathy too, charismatic, hot and mean, although her iPhone face is unlikely to make her the Cathy anyone imagined. They’re also too old to be cavorting across the Yorkshire Moors like randy teenagers – but I guess they do it well.

Fennell keeps beloved Wuthering Heights quotations front and centre even amid mostly re-written dialogue that’s modernised, and generally with success although there are a few slips. But she also knows exactly the type of content to deliver to get female fans of today hot under the collar, including a rendezvous in the rain between Cathy and Heathcliff that involves a fireman’s lift and a coat around the shoulders.

Even when Heathcliff turns his attentions to Isabella, whom he treats diabolically, their relationship is developed into something much more twisted but less uncomfortable in its power dynamic.

Obviously the whole point of Wuthering Heights is that Cathy and Heathcliff can’t be together (weakened by it just being about class), so the torment and revenge only ratchets up. It’s all a bit ridiculous, but Fennell knows and has fun with it, embracing the characters’ deep yearning for a heady and destructive love, damn the consequences.

But there’s also some beauty in that doomed romance, amped up to 11 and capable of leaving a lump in the throat and your head and heart thrust back into the angst of your teenage years.

Some will argue that this Wuthering Heights feels like style over substance because half the book is missing, although it’s not the first adaptation to do this.

Fennell has clearly run rampant with feelings and vibes over obsessive faithfulness – but the wallop of its emotions still has the ability to transport audiences and linger afterwards.

Let us swoon in peace.

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