{"id":1784290,"date":"2026-02-20T15:32:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T12:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1784290"},"modified":"2026-02-20T15:32:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T12:32:58","slug":"wuthering-heights-review-a-romance-in-scare-quotes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1784290","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWuthering Heights\u201d Review: A Romance in Scare Quotes"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/media.pitchfork.com\/photos\/6998755697b8ea385db5141d\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/P4K_Movie-Review_2-1.png”]<\/p>\n

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Columns<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWuthering Heights\u201d<\/em> Review: A Romance in Scare Quotes<\/h1>\n
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Emerald Fennell\u2019s Emily Bront\u00eb adaptation has high drama, gothic excess, and Charli XCX on the soundtrack. And it\u2019s still boring.<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Anna Gaca<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Graphic by Chris Panicker; Courtesy of Warner Bros.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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You\u2019ll be sorely disappointed if you pick up Wuthering Heights<\/em> after this. Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s 1847 novel is a slow read with an out-of-time atmosphere, really one of the most virginal and repressed romance stories of all time. That\u2019s not something I picked up on myself as a child, but reading as an adult, you\u2019re like, All this drama\u2014aren\u2019t they even going to make out?<\/em><\/p>\n

Emerald Fennell\u2019s new film rendition\u2014officially titled \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d<\/em> in scare quotes\u2014drags, too, which is surprising, since her adaptation retells the story with fanfic gusto by making its emotional subtext as explicit and viscous as possible. The unconsummated love and undying obsession between Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and her unruly adopted brother Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi)? Well, they\u2019re grown and fucking. The novel\u2019s heavy psychosexual undertones and implied intergenerational trauma? It\u2019s right out there in the open, wearing bondage gear. It\u2019s not a bad idea. Fennell\u2019s approach opens up an endless well of drama and symbolism, which she plumbs for an imaginative and overwrought movie with the sumptuous swag of high period drama and the garish flair of Melania Trump\u2019s Christmas.<\/p>\n

In an era of instant gratification and few taboos, how to represent an antique story so entirely conditioned on denial and restraint? Fennell\u2019s screenplay strips out the story-within-a-story structure, sidelines major characters, and simplifies the multi-generational plot\u2014all regular book adaptation stuff. These also happen to be the distinct formal characteristics of Wuthering Heights<\/em>, qualities that make it a peculiar, multifaceted historical novel and not a more straightforward bodice ripper with shades of the step-siblings on PornHub. The first time Catherine and Heathcliff almost hook up on screen is legitimately crazy hot, and it sets a high bar for their would-be physical chemistry that nothing in the next hour-plus will ever touch. \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d<\/em> is tediously long, and the acting is not strong enough to carry this outright irrational love story, even if it does kind of make more sense now that they\u2019re finally getting some.<\/p>\n

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\"Image<\/span><\/p>\n
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Wuthering Heights<\/em><\/div>\n
Charli XCX<\/div>\n

Read the Review<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Thank God for Catherine\u2019s faithful servant Nelly (Hong Chau), who, even with a small role in the film\u2019s plot, is the only actor here with a meaningful grasp of emotional subtlety. These star-crossed romantic leads are tragically miscast: Robbie\u2019s authentically wholesome aspect suits the role of a grown-up little Catherine, but as Cathy, the bitter and unpredictable adult, she\u2019s missing the character\u2019s volatile psychic wrongness, what the critic Elizabeth Hardwick referred to as \u201cthe charm of a wayward schizophrenic girl.\u201d Complaining she\u2019s too old for the part is a distraction from Elordi, the real problem here. Elordi is passable in his grungy younger iteration and ludicrous as the adult Heathcliff, back from his glow-up like a looksmaxxing skincare influencer wearing a cunty little earring. With the beard shaved, it\u2019s suddenly apparent he doesn\u2019t have enough facial expressions to carry enduring torment and eternal vengeance\u2014he barely even looks mad.<\/p>\n

And like Fennell\u2019s Saltburn<\/em>, \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d<\/em> spends way too long being decorative, stranding us in the decadent scenery and blood-red walls at moments when another director would have sought stronger performances or more interesting camerawork. The drama is dull and unconvincing, and then you have to laugh: Past Wuthering Heights<\/em> adaptations are rarely much fun (\u201cTake care not to smile at any part of it,\u201d after all), but in service of unsettling the vibe, Fennell gets very silly with it. We are aware that Cathy is aware that her jewelry is comically huge. To explain the plush sets, the neighboring Linton family becomes velvet manufacturing royalty. Heathcliff\u2019s chest is so manly that it\u2019s constantly filling the screen. And in one of Fennell\u2019s wildest edits, pure-hearted girl next door Isabella Linton (Alison Oliver) becomes a scary-horny savant \u00e0 la Emma Stone in Poor Things,<\/em> with a fabulous voodoo dollhouse and a questionably consensual taste for S&M. She\u2019s so annoying and she\u2019s my favorite part\u2014the only stuff in the movie that feels as delightfully perverse as I imagine it would be to witness the Victorian mind behold any of this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Fennell\u2019s grown-up fairy tale aspires to the frilly pop auteurism of Sofia Coppola\u2019s Marie Antoinette<\/em> or Greta Gerwig\u2019s Barbie<\/em>, and in \u201cChains of Love,\u201d Charli XCX\u2019s soundtrack has already spawned a hit with cool-girl credentials. But Marie and Barbie are supposed to be shallow\u2014that\u2019s their whole thing. Wuthering Heights<\/em> has layers, and with so much visual titillation you\u2019re likely to miss the genuinely gothic details, like how Bront\u00eb\u2019s classic image of the ghost at the window is foreshadowed by young Heathcliff\u2019s view into Catherine\u2019s childhood bedroom. Later in life, it\u2019s Heathcliff who breaks a window to catch Cathy\u2019s attention; at home with her rich husband Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), she shares a double bedroom suite like Norma Desmond\u2019s in Sunset Boulevard<\/em> and thus is never seen to be truly at home with anyone. She\u2019s focused on Heathcliff, though, and other feelings barely register. Beginning from a text so discreet that the reader feels implicated in its conspiracy, \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d<\/em> works so hard to outperform it that even fatal attraction fails to hold interest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

[analyse_source url=”http:\/\/pitchfork.com\/thepitch\/wuthering-heights-review-a-romance-in-scare-quotes\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/media.pitchfork.com\/photos\/6998755697b8ea385db5141d\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/P4K_Movie-Review_2-1.png”] Columns \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d Review: A Romance in Scare Quotes Emerald Fennell\u2019s Emily Bront\u00eb adaptation has high drama, gothic excess, and Charli XCX on the soundtrack. And it\u2019s still boring. By Anna Gaca February 20, 2026 Graphic by Chris Panicker; Courtesy of Warner Bros. You\u2019ll be sorely disappointed if you pick up Wuthering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,54],"class_list":["post-1784290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1784290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1784290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1784290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1784290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}