"Wuthering Heights" (2026)
We assume the intentional quotation marks around the title is this film's way of letting us know that, to put it mildly, this ain't your Grandma's Wuthering Heights.
Not that we ever expected it would look or sound like director William Wyler's movie-palace-popcorn 1939 version with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.
Or for that matter, any other subsequent version of the Emily Bronte gothic heavy-breather that's come along through the years......(usually there's one or more for every generation....)
Every filmmaker and screenwriter treats the Bronte book like a literary buffet, picking and choosing what they like, discarding what doesn't appeal to them and spicing up what's left with their very own creative and cultural condiments.
And so indeed did director-writer Emerald Fennell, who made her reputation with that provocative, strikingly visual thriller "Saltburn", sort of Fennell's dream/nightmare warped funhouse mirror version of 'The Talented Mr. Ripley'.....(featuring a lower class snake who slithers into an uppercrust Garden of Eden....)
Here Fennell, plunders the bare bones of Bronte's tale (just the parts that stick in our heads from all the other versions) and concocts an over-the-top sexual Grand Opera, dripping with assorted bodily fluids, including semen, vomit, shit and egg yolks. So beware, this is one movie that defiantly declares......screw 'em if they can't take a yolk.
Truth be told, we've always held a soft spot in our heart for visualist directors who turn every camera shot into a wildly exaggerated eye-candy feast.....artists like Sergio Leone, David Lean and Fellini come to mind....(even our favorite British madman, Ken Russell).
Emerald Fennell's foggy forbidding Yorkshire Moors look designed for Edgar Allen Poe. The crumbling Earnshaw estate, Wuthering Heights is a maze of dark cavernous spaces, while you could fly helicopters in and out of the Edgar Linton's dazzling, sprawling estate.
And more than matching the grandiosity of the settings are the bubbling up passions of those overheated crazy kids, Heathcliff and Cathy, played respectively with simmering passion by that tall, tall drink of gloom Jacob Elordi and eye bulging Margot Robbie, going through the whole movie as she's just been tased, an 18th century horny Barbie.
Our mighty (and mighty moist) lovers, whom cruel fate and hot tempers have conspired to separate, finally fall into marathon humping until Heathy's inherent cruel streak overtakes him.....and then the film starts to resemble 'Wuthering Heights' fan fiction as written by '50 Shades' readers....and to be fair, incel Pornhub boys too. When the soundtrack isn't rumbling with ominous portent, Charlie XCX pop songs take over, adding to the overall sense of overcooked excess.
As wacky and frenzied as it all is, we embraced the movie and...yes, damn well enjoyed all of its stunning imagery and melodrama brought to a full boil. Whether you love it or loathe it, Emerald Fennell's 'Wuthering Heights' represents a singular vision that stands out in sea of big budget, play-it-safe mediocre filmmaking.
At BQ, we support any director who's got guts enough to swing for the fences even at the risk of colossal failure and/or ridicule, and we don't mind saying we'll be first in line for whatever Emerald Fennell cooks up next.
3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2).
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