Ignore its disappointing Rotten Tomatoes score, Emerald Fennell's controversial Wuthering Heights works because it's like a half-remembered dream

Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights — (Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Chances are, you've already made your mind up about Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights. The film, an adaptation of the beloved Emily Brontë Gothic classic, has spurred a frenzy of discourse: accusations of flagrantly disregarding the source material, of twisting a layered and complex story into a derivative steamy romance, or of ignoring the novel's complicated themes, have abounded.

This maelstrom also translated into the film's reception: it currently sits at 66% on Rotten Tomatoes, a career low for Fennell, the provocative director of Promising Young Woman and Saltburn.

As an English Literature graduate who has read Wuthering Heights no less than seven times, I was wary of this adaptation, but decided to keep an open mind. I'm a firm believer that adaptations should be transformative, and I was prepared to meet Fennell's film on its own terms. What I saw when I finally sat down in the theater was Wuthering Heights as a half-remembered dream – and that's why it works.

Be with me always

Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights — (Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Like many adaptations, Fennell's version of Wuthering Heights reshapes the story to focus solely on Catherine and Heathcliff. Margot Robbie plays Catherine (or Cathy) Earnshaw, the spirited, cruel daughter of Martin Clunes' Mr. Earnshaw, and Jacob Elordi is Heathcliff, a young boy Mr. Earnshaw finds on the streets and brings home to his windswept, dark, and foreboding home of Wuthering Heights.

The pair grow up together and, by the time they're teenagers, they've become so tightly woven they're inextricable; Cathy famously declares "whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same" when describing her love for Heathcliff. However, in both the novel and the film, Heathcliff and Cathy cannot be together – for many reasons, including class – and instead Catherine marries her wealthy neighbor Edgar Linton. Heathcliff, after overhearing Catherine say it would "degrade" her to marry him, vanishes, leaving Cathy to her new life. Of course, Heathcliff only heard half the story, missing Cathy's passionate declaration of love.

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The novel tracks the main characters across their entire lives, including the introduction of their children, and through them, many of the novel's central themes are brought to fruition. Not in Fennell's version, however.

"This book is so dense. It's so complicated. It's so epic. It takes place over generations, and I think either you make a miniseries, or even a series of 10 episodes, where you give everything the attention that it would need to be completely faithful to the book, or you do what I've done here, and make your own response to the book, and the things that it made you feel, and the things that you wish happen and didn't happen," Fennell told Screen Rant of the decision.

"Before I reread it again with a view of adapting it, I wrote down everything I remembered from the book from the times I'd read it before and from the first time I read it," she added. "And some of it was real, and some of it was my own imaginings and memory."

Take any form

Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights — (Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Indeed, Fennell's adaptation is more like a hazy, half-recalled version of the story: the general shape and feeling of the first half of the novel is there, but the details are off. The second generation is entirely absent, along with Catherine's older brother Hindley, who is a source of Heathcliff's abuse in the novel. Instead, Mr. Earnshaw is the drunken, abusive older man in the house. Similarly, the wealthy Linton siblings are not siblings here but guardian and ward, and they are introduced as moving into their home as adults, rather than meeting young Cathy and Heathcliff as children.

The film leans fully into this dreamy surreality after Catherine marries Edgar Linton. In a montage movingly soundtracked by Charli xcx's 'Chains of Love,' a song about a tortured romance, Cathy wears stunning gowns, sparkling jewellery, and silvery eye makeup, and she picnics on a giant strawberry in a beautiful garden and plays curious parlor games with her new family. Life with the Lintons is lovely but strange, and the only time Catherine finds her equilibrium is when she is outside on the Yorkshire moors, her eyes closed and her cheek pressed against the grass; even in this dreamscape, Fennell understands that Catherine Earnshaw is a wild thing who could never truly be at home in the Lintons' dollhouse.

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Similarly, Fennell's Wuthering Heights indulges in a heady dose of wish fulfilment when Heathcliff returns. As in the novel, he has mysteriously made a fortune he refuses to divulge the origins of – and while in Brontë's book he and Catherine still cannot be together, Fennell lets the pair finally collide in a secret, self-destructive affair. This is the film's biggest departure from the source material, and it's an interesting exercise in what if?

This change also solidifies that Catherine and Heathcliff's tormented bond is the messy beating heart of the film, much as it is in the book: while their time together is depicted across only the first half of the novel, its ramifications echo through the second half and the generation that follows them.

It's also through this twist to the tale that Fennell's decision to remove the second generation from the film makes tragic sense. In the novel, the new generation brings an end to the cycle of generational trauma that moves through the book; in Fennell's film, Catherine and Heathcliff only have this one life and one chance to make things right. Still, their obsessive love, so intense it teeters on the brink of hatred, and the shockwaves of hurt it inflicts on the other characters, are all felt here as they are in the novel.

Drive me mad

Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights — (Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Fennell has never claimed Wuthering Heights would be a faithful adaptation, which is even reflected in the stylistic choice to put the title in quotation marks. This is her version, straight from her own mind, shown in the lavish, anachronistic costumes and sets.

Of course, there are still valid criticisms to be made. Fennell does engage with the novel's themes of class, trauma, and revenge, but not all that deeply. The film also does not grapple with race or address accusations of whitewashing (Heathcliff's ethnicity is ambiguous in the novel and is still a matter of scholarly debate, though his repeated racial othering suggests he isn't white).

But Fennell has done exactly what she set out to do: bring her own version of the novel to the screen. She has distilled the essence of Catherine and Heathcliff's relationship as she sees it and used it to conjure up this dream version of the story that can either enchant or repulse, depending on your perspective.

In one of the novel's most enduring quotes, Heathcliff desperately begs Cathy to "be with me always – take any form – drive me mad!" This is Wuthering Heights in Fennell's form, and it's certainly driving people mad. Whether that's a good thing or not is up to you.

Wuthering Heights is in theaters now. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.

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I'm the Deputy Entertainment Editor here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.

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