You’ve seen the Wuthering Heights method dressing and the fauxmance between Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and now, just in time for Valentine’s Day, you’ll finally get to see the actual movie. However, anyone familiar with the epic story of Catherine and Heathcliff knows this isn’t your typical romance, and the big question now is what are critics saying about the book-to-screen adaptation?
With more than a dozen versions of the Emily Brontë novel having been made around the world, Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights may be the most graphic, with first reactions calling it “aggressively provocative,” and Margot Robbie herself describing a screening for her friends as “the most unhinged experience of my life.” David Fear of Rolling Stone has a similar assessment, calling it possibly the “horniest literary adaptation ever made,” writing:
Fennell’s interpretation is all about channeling pleasure — the sexual pleasure of abandoning yourself to amour fou, of course, with a strong emphasis on the fou. But aesthetic pleasure above all. So much depends on the way a red dress falls across an equally radiantly red floor, or the manner in which the billowing train of a white wedding dress trails behind Cathy as she crosses the moors. The squish of strongly kneaded dough is amplified in a way to make palms sweat. Sight and sound are all extra-ribbed for your you-know-what, but the movie is sensual in a way that aims to engage not just eyes and ears, but all of the senses at once.
Kate Erbland of IndieWire gives it a B, saying Wuthering Heights is likely to simultaneously enrage literary fans while sparking a new legion of devotees. However, the critic wishes Emerald Fennell would have been bold enough to “be more pervy,” saying If you’re going to go there, go there. If love is going to ruin these two, let’s ruin them.” Erbland continues:
Much has been made of the erotic heat between Robbie’s Cathy and Elordi’s Heathcliff, and while purists will be shocked about the level of, uh, interaction between the two (‘not text!!’), other audience members might be let down. All the smutty stuff is in the film’s frankly very good trailers, and even then, it’s cut within an inch of its life, hinting at much that doesn’t actually exist. If the promise of the film is, again, to ‘come undone,’ Fennell and the stars haven’t fully met that challenge, at least in the film’s corset-tight narrative.
David Rooney of THR warns this “is not your Penguin Classics school curriculum edition” of Wuthering Heights but rather an “unabashedly horny adaptation.” The above critic may have been left wanting in terms of “pervy,” but Rooney thinks there’s definitely enough to earn that R-rating. The critic says:
Fennell’s overhaul flirts with insanity, and if you can let go of preconceived notions about how this story should be told, it’s arguably the writer-director’s most purely entertaining film — pulpy, provocative, drenched in blazing color and opulent design, laced with anachronistic flourishes, sexy, pervy, irreverent and resonantly tragic. Often teetering on the verge between silly and clever, it’s Wuthering Heights for the Bridgerton generation, guaranteed to moisten tear ducts and inflame young hearts.
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle says in Emerald Fennell’s attempt to sex up Wuthering Heights, she makes so many bad decisions that it becomes unclear why she made an adaptation of this novel rather than any other generic romance. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi do what they can, LaSalle says, but they’re in constant competition with a soundtrack that insists we’re feeling emotions that aren’t there. The critic continues:
Emerald Fennell takes Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and makes an absolute mess of it. The movie’s literary provenance, as well as the presence of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, might persuade some people to believe they’re watching a good movie. There’s also the fact that Fennell is a skilled filmmaker who can put over her ideas. The problem is that all her ideas here are bad — self-defeating, enervating and, in several places, unintentionally hilarious.
Lindsey Bahr of the AP rates it 2 out of 4 stars, saying Wuthering Heights is an exploration of class, race, desire, revenge, trauma and more, which is why it has been adapted so many times. This version, however, “is an undernourishing feast, neither dangerous nor hot enough.” More from Bahr:
In these sex-deprived times at the cinema, if some corset kink, power games and smoldering star power from two genetically blessed Australians is what you’re looking for, Wuthering Heights might just satisfy that big-screen itch. There are myriad pleasures to be had in the bold, absurd pageantry and devilish scheming. ... With the right crowd, it could make for a fun night out at the movies. Yet for all the big swings, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights amounts to something oddly shallow and blunt: garish and stylized fan fiction with the scope and budget of an old-school Hollywood epic.
The critics don’t agree on whether you’ll love or hate Emerald Fennell’s version of Emily Brontë’s classic, but it seems likely you’ll have strong feelings either way. Wuthering Heights stands with a Tomatometer score of 66% on Rotten Tomatoes, further showing that there’s not a general consensus on Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie’s latest project.
If you’ve been looking forward to this movie or want to ramp up the heat over Valentine’s Day weekend, you can give this flick a shot starting Friday, February 13.
