If you want a flashy romance with all the stops out, go and see the film. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi certainly make a sizzling pair. But if you want a darker, more complex story that echoes down the generations, read the book. And by the way, it has a happy ending. (Jane Sullivan)

To a book lover, this adaptation may seem superficial as compared to the intricate details of the novel. However, there’s only so much two hours of screen time can include. The film capitalizes on the passion and yearning in Catherine and Heathcliff’s tale and makes full use of its duration in the best way. Through her film, Fennel emphasizes the importance of emotion and message over precise accuracy. She prioritizes making the audience feel something. And it works. By foregrounding longing, chemistry, and passion, she reframes the story less as a bleak tragedy and more as an intense romance. Only a robot could watch this film and remain unaffected. Its romance is undeniable, making it a fitting Valentine’s Day watch—if you don’t mind a touch of tragedy. (Susannah Hughes)

The film is definitely entertaining, and I was never bored during my viewing. But I could not overcome my grievances with Fennell’s narrative and casting choices. Her version tries to turn a gothic horror into a contemporary love story with a Charli xcx soundtrack, which ultimately translates as hollow and devoid of substance on the screen. (P.B. Jernigan)

The costumes were also on point, with standouts being the ones Catherine wore, specifically the red gowns that were beautiful and her bulky jewelry that some would die to wear. 

Charli XCX’s ambient music and flowing melodies highlighted the scenes they were set in, and made each interaction feel genuine – something that was hard for the two leading actors. It was a pleasurable surprise to hear when viewing. 

Although these standouts are present, it was hard to ignore the overt sexuality throughout. We get it. This is supposed to be “primal,” “sexual,” “cynical,” even. Do we really need to see Elordi’s tongue licking what’s supposed to be a wall of Catherine’s skin? 

Robbie was all right, but didn't really have the appeal of Catherine, and Elordi's performance was reminiscent of his Euphoria days playing the toxic teenage boyfriend, Nate Jacobs. All in all, ok, but missing the passionate mark of the book. (Lily Cole)

I walked into the theater this past weekend, cautiously optimistic but left confused and hollow.

The movie’s only highlight was the cinematography. There were gorgeous shots of Catherine Earnshaw's (Margot Robbie) and Edgar Linton's (Shazad Latif) home and the northern England countryside. Emerald Fennell,  the film's director, can have her tens for that — and that’s it. (Dayna Wilkerson)

Erica Gonzales, deputy digital editor: What did you think of Wuthering Heights, as someone who hasn’t read the book?

Lauren Puckett-Pope, senior culture editor: I found it an easy, pleasurable viewing experience—no pun intended—but I did not find it a particularly enriching one. And I think that’s fascinating, given that Wuthering Heights, the novel, is the subject of such intense and lasting study. There’s a reason the book has the reputation it does both in and outside literary circles. So, even as someone who hasn’t read the whole thing—I’ve started Wuthering Heights many times, and I’ve just never made the commitment all the way to the end, forgive me—I came away from this adaptation thinking, There’s no way this is even close to what the book was going for.

But Emerald Fennell, to her credit, has made it clear she’s not trying to directly translate the book to the screen. What did you think? You’ve read the book and love it.

EG: This is one book I love and have reread many times. I tried going into the film not being too attached and being open-minded. I have nothing against anachronistic visuals or fashion; I loved Marie Antoinette, and I also saw parallels here to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. And even though I appreciated those anachronisms in this film, I was kind of waiting to be grabbed by them.

A 17th-century manor in Yorkshire that boasts links to the Brontë sisters has been put up for sale.

Hidden behind a 3m-tall stone wall, the grade I listed West Riddlesden Hall near Keighley is on the market for £1.15 million.

The manor was home to a family who employed Charlotte Brontë as governess to their children in 1839, although she spent more time at another property they owned a few miles away.

John Pennington, who has owned the house since 2001, said he was looking to downsize from the six-bedroom, 2.3-acre property. His timing could be fortuitous, considering the resurgence of interest in the Brontë sisters following the film adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

West Riddlesden Hall was completed in 1687 for Thomas Leach, a local businessman, although some sections are believed to date to the early 15th century.

John Sidgwick, who later owned the home and employed Brontë, is widely believed to have been her inspiration for the Byronic hero of Jane Eyre, Edward Rochester. [...]

Jane Eyre was published in 1847 and was Brontë’s first major literary success after several ventures into poetry. During her short employment with the Sidgwicks, Brontë found she disliked childminding, often lamenting the behaviour of the “riotous, perverse, unmanageable cubs”.

The author’s strained relationship with John Sidgwick’s wife Sarah can perhaps also be detected in the novel. In a letter written while she was still the family’s governess, Brontë described Sarah as devoid of “every fine feeling of every gentle and delicate sentiment”. In Jane Eyre, Rochester’s wife, Bertha Mason, dies by suicide after committing arson.

West Riddlesden Hall’s sister property, East Riddlesden Hall, which was donated to the National Trust in 1934, also boasts a Brontë connection. Its dark stone walls and rose windows made up one of the primary sets for the television series of Wuthering Heights (2009), starring Tom Hardy as Heathcliff and Charlotte Riley as Catherine Earnshaw, as well as a range of other screen adaptations of the Emily Brontë book.

The National Trust is currently hosting an exhibition, Lights, Camera, Brontë, about the manor’s prominence in film and television interpretations of the novel since the 1920s. (Fintan Hogan)

Story Telling with Sophia Hatfield

Tues 17 Feb, 10am - 4pm

Servant's Room, Brontë Parsonage Museum

Join storyteller Sophia Hatfield for entertaining stories and songs inspired by the ordinary folk who lived, worked and walked amidst the Brontë landscape. Featuring famous Yorkshire folk tales inspired by the servants who lived and worked at the Brontë Parsonage, choose an object to uncover a short story, featuring original live music, a curious collection of Victorian props and a whole host of charming characters. 

Whatever your age, expect to be transported to a world of fairies, boggarts, magic and mayhem!

Wild Wednesday: Haunt me! craft workshop

Wed 18 Feb, 10am - 3pm

Brontë Event Space in the Old School Room

To mark the release of the new cinema adaptation of Wuthering Heights, join artist Julia Ogden in creating some mini film posters in celebration. Be as wild as you like! 

Everyone welcome. Suitable for ages 7+, with some simpler activities for younger children.

 Still, when I saw it on Friday night, the cinema was packed. There were squeals, gasps and, yes, tears. It was an entertaining fever dream, with beautiful cinematography and a final sequence that leaves you devastated. When fewer people are going to film theatres, it should be welcome that “Wuthering Heights” has recouped its $80m production budget on its opening weekend. Event cinema  sells tickets.
Luckily, Brontë fans who can’t abide this film have countless alternatives that cleave more faithfully to the novel’s spirit, including the 1939 version with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, 1992’s take with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes and Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film. They should also be reassured that the controversy around the film has driven renewed interest in the book itself, with UK sales up 469% over the past year. That is one good thing Fennell lovers and haters can agree on.

In the case of Wuthering Heights, the album sometimes feels as if Charli committed fully to her concept, but didn’t allow herself to branch out even further, reach higher, express – or even abandon – more. It is a symphony, but not quite an opus. Yet as it stands, this might actually be her most successful album: re-imagining herself as bravely as she has many times, but shedding the fur coat. And in that, this is likely a more valid, lasting and, surprisingly, necessary adaptation than Fennell could have managed. Happy, belated, Valentine’s Day! (John Wohlmacher in Beats per Minute)

 But Wuthering Heights (the album, pointedly un-quoted, as if it’s trying to outgrow its source material) refuses total self-seriousness. Instead, it’s a feverishly romantic valentine to the film, corseted in orchestral swells yet still beating with Charli’s signature chrome-plated pop. There are violins, yes—sawing away like they’re auditioning for a BBC period drama—but even at her most windswept, the synths land with a nightclub exactitude similar to 2024’s BRAT. The moors, it turns out, have a subwoofer. (Cam Delisle in ReadRange)

 At some point after Fennell asked Charli to contribute music to Wuthering Heights, Charli raised that request and inquired about making a full-length concept album. From a creator’s standpoint, it’s a brilliant way to follow up Brat. Its ambiguous association with the film invokes inherently lower stakes, but defining it as a “concept album” still grants Charli a considerable amount of creative freedom that a proper soundtrack album might restrict. Most of what we hear in the film Wuthering Heights, for instance, isn’t Charli’s songs but Anthony Willis’ string-laden score. (Abby Jones in Stereogum)

 Wuthering Heights unfolds as a shape-shifting fever dream, reveling in its strange, abrasive textures while never letting go of sharp hooks or plainspoken immediacy. Charli feels far more attuned to the dark, knotted intensity of Brontë’s original vision than its film counterpart; the emotions here aren’t framed with irony or held at arm’s length. They arrive raw and unguarded. The result is a stormy, gothic triumph. (Caroline Kelly in Extra)

 For years, Chaney’s version of Dark Eyed Sailor only existed in live YouTube clips, but she finally released a recorded version last Friday, produced by Oli Deakin (mastermind of CMAT’s albums If My Wife New I’d Be Dead and Euro-Country). She’d recorded “many” versions of it before – three were even mastered for albums, but “never quite fit”. She finally heard it fit at the Wuthering Heights premiere in Leicester Square on 5 February. 

What was the evening like? “Drinking champagne behind Richard E Grant?” She laughs. “Insane. I gripped my husband’s hand so tight when the song came in – hearing my voice all alone – that it reminded me of giving birth, gripping my doula’s hand so hard I nearly broke her knuckles!” 

The song appears again when Heathcliff returns to Cathy, now rich and grown up, and in the film’s final, longing minutes. It’s always been Chaney’s husband’s favourite recording, she adds. “It’s a song I love very much. It comes back and haunts you.” (Jude Rogers)

And more music inspired by Wuthering Heights. Far Out Magazine rescues a 1983 song by Stevie Nicks, Wild Heart which was inspired by Wuthering Heights 1939 film.

Professor Helen Archer said: “We forget the context in which the Brontë’s were writing. Everyone then was shorter, so Heathcliff would have been towering at 5ft 6in – exactly the height of Mr Sunak.”

“Scholars have struggled to pinpoint the character’s ethnic background, but evidence such as dark eyes, dark hair and a chapter in the original manuscript where he cooks a biryani point to his being Punjabi Indian.

“The cruelty and animalistic passion of Heathcliff must be balanced with the instincts that earned him a fortune in Victorian England, so he would have the clipped, nerdy intonation of a former analyst at Goldman Sachs. (...)

“So yes, all the evidence suggests Margot Robbie should have been making out with the member for Richmond and Northallerton. But Hollywood predictably ignores this because nobody could wank over that smarmy twat.”

«Siempre que vas a ver una película basada en un libro, sales desilusionado si esperas que cada acción sea igual», sostiene. Para ella, el error no está necesariamente en la adaptación, sino en la expectativa. La directora del film (recuerda) ha realizado una reinterpretación, no una copia literal. Y eso exige aceptar que el cine tiene su propia narrativa visual. 

Donde sí se muestra más contundente es en el apartado estético. La primera parte de la película le convence. Destaca la atmósfera gótica, la lluvia constante, los paisajes agrestes que reflejan la intensidad emocional del relato. Esa Inglaterra oscura y ventosa conecta, a su juicio, con el espíritu borrascoso de la obra.

Sin embargo, cuando la protagonista cambia de estatus social, algo se rompe. Aparecen dorados excesivos, una decoración que le resulta demasiado barroca, más cercana al siglo XVIII que a la segunda mitad del XIX. Y entonces dispara una de las frases más comentadas: «Parece un pastelón de Disney». (Patricia De La Torre) (Translation)

Wuthering Heights has ravished the global box office in its opening weekend, with the new Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie adaptation taking US$76.8m (£56m, A$108m).

Emerald Fennell’s reimagining of Emily Brontë’s novel made US$34.8m in the North American box office from 3,682 locations, making it the year’s biggest opening so far.

While this is lower than early projections of a $40m to $50m opening weekend in the US and Canada, studio Warner Bros. has projected it will reach $40m by the end of the President’s Day long weekend in the US.

Internationally, Wuthering Heights passed predictions to make US$42m in 76 territories, with more men reportedly making up audiences outside North America, where PostTrak polling estimated 76% of ticket buyers were women.

The romantic drama, starring Australians Robbie and Elordi as Catherine and Heathcliff, also performed strongly in Australia, where it made A$6.07m (US$4.3m) in its opening weekend, which Deadline attributed to the stars’ “home field advantage”.

A global total of US$82m, taking in the whole US long weekend, would mean Wuthering Heights had already recouped its reported $80m production budget in its opening weekend, not accounting for the millions spent on marketing and promotion. And the film still has several big openings on the horizon, in Japan and Vietnam on 27 February, and in China on 13 March. (Sian Cain)

But as the lights went down and an odd squeaking noise, suspiciously like bedsprings, filled the cinema, growing louder and louder, and then the first, sudden, shocking shot flashed onto the screen, Fennell had me by the scruff of the neck. It’s stylish, confident, sometimes affronting, wickedly funny but it also has a heart. I dropped a few tears at the end.

I’m confused by the overall negative response. The film is of course not faithful in all respects to Emily Brontë’s novel, which would anyhow be a weird standard to apply to any adaptation — the word itself implies change. The business of taking something born of one era and making it appeal to another inevitably involves change — how boring if it didn’t. Also, as any of the noble 10,000 who recently bought and hopefully read a copy could tell you, Wuthering Heights is not a book you want to be entirely faithful to. It’s a wild work of imaginative invention but it’s also ludicrous, repetitive and, for the final 200 pages, a slog. Fennell’s film, which like several adaptations before it has done away with the dreary second half, is largely better for its alterations. [...]

Fennell is not a filmmaker interested in muddy Yorkshire realism but her bloody-red, swirling silks and surreal sequences are a different approach to truth. When Cathy’s father — a delightfully menacing Martin Clunes — dies, we see his body flanked by two vast, tottering towers of empty green glass gin bottles. It’s not a shot to read literally but a witty, efficient way of reminding us that this was a man who has poisoned himself to death.

It’s not a perfect film, but there is so much to like about it: the two child actors, Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper, playing Cathy and Heathcliff, best friends who survive together through a brutal childhood, who yanked at my heartstrings from the start with their sweetness and their fear. Then the lovely, bickering patter of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, sexually obsessed with each other, one exasperating, one exasperated.

“I am Heathcliff!” says Cathy in the novel. “He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” Obsession is the dark spirit of Emily Brontë’s novel and Emerald Fennell has trapped it on-screen.

“Wuthering Heights” celebrates the 1847 novel’s strangeness in a modern way—it is romantic and steamy, shocking and devastating. And although it does not follow the novel word for word, it is a fantastic interpretation of a beloved classic. (Taylor Finnell)

Catherine and Heathcliff are unapologetically callous, spitting hateful vitriol at anyone close to them. In the end, it’s what makes them so perfect for each other. The sexual tension between Catherine and Heathcliff radiates from the screen thanks to the chemistry between Robbie and Elordi. (Sarah Gopaul)

So there you have it. Wuthering Heights is not faithful to the book, but it is faithful to what the film aroused in young Emerald Fennell’s imagination. It’s a remarkable thing to be able to evoke the passions of a young female bibliophile. The resulting film is a bit silly, very sexy, visually decadent, and, yes, wonderful. (Max Weiss)

Let’s begin with the wink — the self-aware mischief — embedded in “Wuthering Heights” from the title itself. This is not quite Wuthering Heights, but “Wuthering Heights” in inverted quotation marks — the way the film appears on posters and in its stylized title sequence. Director Emerald Fennell seemingly wants to shield herself from devoted fans of Emily Brontë’s immortal novel and declare out loud: This is not an adaptation of the book. This is my version of Wuthering Heights — or “Wuthering Heights” — what I saw in the novel and chose to put on screen, with all the color, sex and pop songs on the soundtrack that, in my view, perfectly convey the tragic love story between Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi). I do not care about fidelity to the source material, and certainly not about historical fidelity to early 19th-century Britain. Take it or leave it. And we do. (Benjamin Tovias)

“Wuthering Heights” might not be the adaptation that some people were looking for, but as a dramatic story about love, it hits its mark. The movie is visually rich and musically lush. It’s a dense meal that’s both bitter and sweet as it goes down, but it lingers long after it’s finished. (Tyler Hayes)

Visually, though, this film is just stunning. The cinematography was beautiful. The scenery was all very visually appealing. Almost distractingly so. It all looks expensive and tasteful, which is exactly the wrong approach for a story that should feel hostile and ugly. 

To be clear: adaptations don’t owe us complete fidelity. However, this feels less like a reinterpretation and more like a complete misreading. It felt like someone fell in love with the aesthetic of a doomed romance and completely ignored the racial and class violence that made it doomed in the first place. The irony is that a realistic adaptation of Wuthering Heights would probably be widely hated. It would be uglier. Less romantic. There will be audiences who adore this version for its star power and overall vibe. That’s fair. As a standalone tragic romance, it works. But as an adaptation of one of the most brutal novels of our time, it falls flat. 

And despite all of this, I cried harder at the end of this movie than any movie I have ever seen. And I believe it’s because I carried the context of the story with me into the theater. I knew what these characters were supposed to mean. I can think that the adaptation is a misread, and still admit that it moved me. Maybe that says less about the film and more about how this powerful story has withstood the test of time. (Meg Qualls)

The beauty of the film alone was enough to make me enjoy it and tolerate the poor writing, but visuals can only get you so far. The story is just as crucial, and here it didn’t meet the mark. (Justin Mehlbrech)

I am absolutely no purist. I love artistic playfulness and some bold and original takes on the classics. Some work surprisingly well – the modern Sherlock Holmes TV series with Benedict Cumberbatch. Or "Clueless", a tongue in cheek modern retelling of Jane Austen’s "Emma". However, all should be done with class, subtlety and respect for the original material and its characters. This most recent version of "Wuthering Heights" lacks all these elements. It is superficial and mono-thematic, bordering on parody. Moreover, it changes the very essence of certain personages (for example Nelly - the manipulator, the quirky masochist Isabella and the aforementioned Joseph). (Marta Oliehoek-Samitowska)

“Wuthering Heights” is a wannabe “Romeo and Juliet” that is simply not an adaptation of its source material, aside from the names Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff slapped onto its leads. Not only that, but it also fails to be a compelling romance, whose actors tend to putter around beautiful sets with very little to do. When they are doing things, it’s not even that interesting. It’s a failure on all levels of cinema, and the only enjoyment I could find out of going to the cinema to see it was the popcorn and snacks I had while watching it. (Marguerite C. J. Marley)

Entre una telenovela turca, un culebrón latino, una novela rosa-erótica con escocés macizo de Maya Banks o una indigestión de Peter Greenaway, Yorgos Lánthimos y otros “aggiornadores” de temas históricos o literarios, la actriz, guionista, productora y directora Emerald Fenell (Una joven prometedora, Saltburn) ha reunido a Barbie y a Frankenstein o, lo que es lo mismo, a Margot Robbie y Jacob Elordi (que ya trabajó con ella en Saltburn), dos de los más poderosos y taquilleros sex-symbols actuales, en esta reinterpretación de la obra maestra de Emily Brontë escrita y dirigida por ella. [...]

Este es el camino que Emerald Fenell ha pretendido tomar, exprimiendo de la novela todo su potencial de pasión devastadora y exasperada. Pero su película es puro plástico videoclipero (uso de las canciones de Charli XCX) tan caro como hortera, con mucho cuerpazo y sexo, pero poco erotismo (las metáforas gastro-sexuales son penosas), un diseño de producción de Suzie Davis (Mr. Turner, Cónclave) y un vestuario de su habitual colaboradora Jacqueline Durran (La bella y la bestia, Barbie) que incurren más en la forzada extravagancia de un barroco-pop de pega con un cierto tufo de princesas Disney que en la originalidad visual que se pretende crear.

La extravagancia caprichosa, la modernidad impostada y la trasgresión comercialmente calculada son la marca de esta película que busca gustar epatando o epatar gustando mientras explota a conciencia los rostros y los cuerpos de una entregada Robbie y un menos convincente (como actor) Elordi, más Can Yaman o William Levy que Heathcliff. Ninguno logra hacer creer que son sus personajes. El resultado es un hueco ejercicio de interpretación a brochazos de un texto extraordinario al que se le extirpan sus muchas posibilidades de lecturas más oscuras, arrebatadas, salvajes y críticas.

Como toda traducción es también interpretación, además de las versiones de Wyler y Buñuel, recomiendo a quien no la haya leído la extraordinaria traducción de Carmen Martín Gaite (Alba Editorial) que hace sentir lo que Virginia Woolf escribió sobre Cumbres borrascosas: “Con un par de pinceladas Emily Brontë podía conseguir retratar el espíritu de una cara de modo que no precisara cuerpo; al hablar del páramo conseguía hacer que el viento soplara y el trueno rugiera”. En esta película hay cuerpos, casi es lo único que hay, pero no caracteres. Y no se oye, por mucho ruido que los efectos y la banda sonora metan, oír ni el viento ni el trueno. El problema no es la libertad con la que un texto se reinterprete, sino que se tunee reduciéndolo a telenovela. (Carlos Colón) (Translation)

In the case of Wuthering Heights, the album sometimes feels as if Charli committed fully to her concept, but didn’t allow herself to branch out even further, reach higher, express – or even abandon – more. It is a symphony, but not quite an opus. Yet as it stands, this might actually be her most successful album: re-imagining herself as bravely as she has many times, but shedding the fur coat. And in that, this is likely a more valid, lasting and, surprisingly, necessary adaptation than Fennell could have managed. (John Wohlmacher)

'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' by Anne Brontë

The Brontë novel that feels shockingly most modern didn't originate from Emily or Charlotte, but the youngest sister, Anne. Her heroine, Helen Graham, is a woman fleeing a disastrous marriage and facing social exile because of that choice. She arrives at Wildfell Hall with her young son and a cloud of suspicion trailing her.

Like her older sister's work, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is about control, reputation, and survival, but from the perspective of someone determined not to be destroyed by love. And it deserves a film adaptation that treats Helen as the quietly radical figure she is, choosing autonomy over love, independence over conformity, Realism over Romanticism. This one's for the Moor-loving feminists, you guys. (Jessica Toomer)