TL;DR
- Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights remake pushes boundaries with hyper-sexualized, shock-value scenes.
- Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi headline but play cold, unlikable characters.
- Graphic moments include a grotesque public execution and bizarre sexual imagery.
- Early test screenings split audiences, some calling it “aggressively provocative.”
- Could become the most divisive take on Brontë’s classic yet.
Emerald Fennell Turns Wuthering Heights Into Gothic Filth Fantasy
Emerald Fennell doesn’t just adapt literature — she drags it through the velvet-lined gutter and polishes it with a grin. Her latest cinematic scandal, a reimagining of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as lovers locked in a world where romance has been stripped bare, replaced with icy glares, salacious diversions, and enough shock factor to rattle a Victorian ghost.
Early test screenings left audiences split right down the corseted middle. Some called it “aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive,” accusing it of swapping Brontë’s tortured passion for grotesque indulgence. But if you’ve been following Fennell since Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, you know the woman doesn’t do “subtle.”
From the jump, she makes her intentions clear — the film opens with a public hanging that spirals into a fever dream of grotesque absurdity. The condemned man climaxes mid-drop, sending a gawking crowd into a delirious frenzy. Somewhere in the chaos, a nun gets handsy with the corpse. It’s the kind of scene that will have conservative critics clutching pearls — and some queer cinephiles cackling at the audacity.
And that’s just the appetizer. Fennell serves BDSM play with horse reins, a gallery of masturbation moments, and sexual metaphors that somehow rope in egg yolks, bread kneading, and even a slug. By the time you’ve blinked, she’s made Wuthering Heights less about love and more about appetite — for power, for control, and yes, for sex in its strangest forms.
Cold Lovers, Hot Controversy
Robbie and Elordi’s chemistry is undeniable, but Fennell refuses to let it warm the audience. Their characters are frosty, unlikable, and purposefully disconnected. One screening attendee wondered aloud if this wasn’t exactly Brontë’s point — that love, in its rawest form, is rarely pretty. In Fennell’s world, it’s downright perverse.
Not everyone’s gagging over it — at least, not in the good way. Some left the screening calling it “unbalanced” and “too much.” But others see it as a bold, almost camp reimagining of a story that’s been prettified for too long. For the LGBTQ audience, there’s an undeniable thrill in seeing mainstream cinema embrace unapologetic sexual weirdness, bending traditional romance into something transgressive, liberated, and a little dangerous.
This is Wuthering Heights unshackled, and whether you call it art, filth, or both, Fennell has ensured one thing: you won’t forget it. And for queer viewers craving a cinematic space that doesn’t sanitize desire, that’s worth every gasp.