Wuthering Heights: Barbie and a Frankenstein Monster Love Story
I don't know if you can tell from my blog, but I'm a huge Brontë sisters fan. I've been hooked ever since I saw that Jane Eyre adaptation years ago, with Anne Paquin and Charlotte Gainsbourg portraying Jane at different ages. That film opened up an entire world of period dramas for me. In my view, there's no such thing as too many Brontë or Austen adaptations. So when Emerald Fennell was directing a new Wuthering Heights, I was full of anticipation. After Saltburn broke the internet, I was genuinely curious how Fennell would reimagine this English classic. Spoiler: the magic didn't happen.
This isn't a hate review, but rather a cry of frustration. Everything seemed aligned for success: a starry cast, a talented young director with a bold vision, source material ripe for reinterpretation. Yet something didn't click.
The Casting. I once saw a video discussing how Hollywood's obsession with Botox and fillers leaves actresses with faces unsuited to period dramas. Margot Robbie as Cathy proves the point. This isn't a critique of Robbie's talent or her personal choices, but her sculpted, minimally expressive features, which fit perfectly in contemporary settings or as a Barbie doll, feel unnatural, almost alien, here.
Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff presents a different dilemma. Hollywood loves diversity casting, and while Elordi was fitting as the upper-class character in Saltburn, giving him a role explicitly written as "ethnic" in the original novel feels like a miscast. Ironically, he and Robbie have zero chemistry, which might have worked better if he'd played Edgar instead.
The Plot. Whether due to runtime limitations or budget cuts, this simply isn't a full adaptation of Brontë's 1847 novel. [Spoilers ahead] Cathy's passing should be the narrative's turning point, the moment Heathcliff's grief transforms into something monstrous, turning protagonist into Gothic antagonist. Here, that progression never arrives. We don't witness Heathcliff's evolution into the cunning, revenge-haunted figure who systematically destroys everyone around him. Instead, he remains a man merely filled with grief and jealousy.
The film's climax unintentionally reframes Nelly (Hong Chau) as the actual villain. She torments a pregnant Cathy to death, making the only Asian cast member the story's moral monster, a choice that ironically undermines any claim to thoughtful DEI representation.
The Visuals. Fennell attempts a meta-modernist rereading through various visual provocations. She dresses Cathy in latex, builds her bedroom walls from human flesh, perhaps signifying the suffocating nature of Cathy's marriage to Edgar. She piles empty liquor bottles to show Cathy's father literally drowning himself in alcoholism.
But these surreal touches are too scattered to feel coherent. Why not commit fully, put every character in latex, build every set piece from human skin. Fennell's intentions in introducing those visual codes remain unclear. She hasn't made a classical period drama, nor fully committed to meta-modern reinterpretation. The film exists somewhere in between.
The Influences. Fennell leaves breadcrumbs to her inspirations throughout. Gone with the Wind (1939) references are transparent, from the poster's embrace between Robbie and Elordi to Cathy's expressions, echoing Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara. The set and costume designs consistently nod toward Hollywood's 30s classic. Fennell also pays homage to her previous work Saltburn in one explicit scene (I won't mention which). But narratively, the film feels closer to Russian tragedies like Anna Karenina or Eugene Onegin than anything distinctly Brontëan.
What's Lost. The true tragedy of Wuthering Heights, as Brontë conceived it, lies in how social structures constrain human opportunities. Heathcliff, scraping the bottom of the social hierarchy, accumulates wealth and education through sheer wit. Yet even with this hard-won capital, he cannot break free from the rigid frames into which he was born. He cannot have Cathy. The novel traces how this frustration curdles into sadism, how the oppressed becomes the oppressor, how suffering becomes revenge. Love heals the next generation, those less tainted by money, alcohol, and vice. There is maybe hope for them, but none for Heathcliff.
Fennell offers none of this depth. What we get instead feels like fan fiction: Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in various explicit scenes dressed as period characters. Fennell handles the source material like a girl toying with a Barbie and a Frankenstein monster action figure in her directorial dollhouse. The novel's Gothic undertone flattens into kinky erotica. This vulgarises Brontë's vision.
The disappointment stings precisely because Fennell has such acute sensitivity to the problem of class and stratification. Saltburn proved she can project these themes with genuine creativity. She reaches for similar topics here but cannot grasp it. Still, I'm choosing to believe this is a minor mishap in her promising career. I can't wait to see whatever she does next.
Postscript: I've been reflecting on the film these past days and keep circling back to something: when you sacrifice authenticity for marketing and promotion, audiences can tell. The final product rings hollow. Considering this irony, Saltburn, which I've mentioned throughout this review, feels more like Wuthering Heights than Fennell's actual adaptation does. We have a male character from an alleged underprivileged background, clever and hungry, trying to infiltrate upper-class society only to be ultimately rejected. Viewers who initially sympathise with him watch as that rejection and jealousy reveal a psychopathic monster, someone who destroys people to inherit their lavish estate. That's Heathcliff's arc, transplanted to the 21st century. Looking back, I can trace Fennell's inspiration clearly: Saltburn was always her meta-modernist reinterpretation of Brontë's novel. She just didn't tell us. Which means, in a way, she's already made this movie, making Wuthering Heights not a fresh vision but a strange regression, period drama without authenticity. The real adaptation happened two years earlier. We just weren't looking for it.
đž Image credit:Â The promotional stills used in this review are provided courtesy of the filmâs production and distribution company.
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