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Fennell film sparks whitewashing debate

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Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation of Wuthering Heights opened in UK cinemas Friday to mixed reviews and sparked debate over the casting and alleged whitewashing of Heathcliff.

Financial Times
Charli XCX’s Wuthering Heights has shuddering strings and pounding beats but proves unsatisfying

Soundtrack to the schlocky erotic new film falters after a stirring start

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The Guardian
Meet the unlikely star of the bodice-ripping Wuthering Heights – Martin Clunes

In Emerald Fennell’s BDSM-tinged film, critics have praised Clunes’s turn as the ‘devout misogynist’ Mr Earnshaw It has been billed as the sexiest adaptation of Wuthering Heights, with bodices ripped to shreds and a flirtation with BDSM. And yet the standout star of Emerald Fennell’s new film isn’t one of its smouldering young lovers, played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, but British television’s most affable grump - Martin Clunes. Clunes plays Mr Earnshaw, the patriarch of the Earnshaw household whose decision to bring home a destitute young Heathcliff from Liverpool to the Yorkshire Moors sets in motion the destructive love story at the centre of Wuthering Heights. In Fennell’s reworking, Cathy’s elder brother, Hindley, is abolished entirely, with his cruelty, boozing and gambling folded into the father instead. Continue reading. . .

Meet the unlikely star of the bodice-ripping Wuthering Heights – Martin Clunes
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The Guardian
Digested week: Finally, it’s Wuthering Heights discourse time!

If the British reviews are anything to go by, my rainy London tour bus ride was more stirring It’s here, at last, the moment we’ve been waiting for: Wuthering Heights discourse! Officially released in the UK this Friday, Emerald Fennell’s movie adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel features the biggest female star in the world (Margot Robbie), the second-biggest male star (I’m putting Timothée Chalamet ahead of Jacob Elordi, don’t fight me), and Fennell’s unique writing and directing style that gave us so many memorable moments in Saltburn . On Monday the flag goes up and we’re off! Continue reading. . .

Digested week: Finally, it’s Wuthering Heights discourse time!
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The Guardian
Is Jacob Elordi really what Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights should look like? | Dave Schilling

Bad boy Heathcliff is described as ethnically ambiguous and ‘dark’ in the novel, yet is played by a pretty straightforward white Australian Elordi Tired of movies for kids? Superhero capes and flatulent animated squirrels? Me too. Fortunately, you and I are in luck. This weekend brings the wide release of Saltburn director Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. As is befitting Fennell’s established style, the movie offers over-the-top sexual titillation (though, crucially, zero nudity) and elaborate production design. Plus, a contemporary pop soundtrack from Charli xcx. A horny film version of a 19th-century novel is as adult-skewing as it gets at the box office these days. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi suck face and stand around in the rain in expensive costumes for over two hours in a movie that Fennell proudly declares a loose translation from the page. It excises a large portion of the book’s story and focuses its eye primarily on the illicit romance between Cathy Earnshaw and swarthy Heathcliff. Crucially, it should be pointed out that Heathcliff is technically Cathy’s foster brother, which allows Wuthering Heights to fit comfortably into one of the most popular genres of online video in the world. Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist Continue reading. . .

Is Jacob Elordi really what Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights should look like? | Dave Schilling
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The Guardian
Tell us: has the new Wuthering Heights film adaptation inspired you to read Emily Brontë’s novel?

We want to hear people’s thoughts on reading the novel ahead of the new adaptation - and if you’ve watched the film how does it compare? Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights came to theatres worldwide on 13 February, with the director Emerald Fennell saying she hopes it will “provoke a sort of primal response. ” But Brontë’s tempestuous 1847 novel itself has been described as too extreme for the screen and on its release it was certainly not interpreted as a love story. “I can’t adapt the book as it is but I can approximate the way it made me feel, ” Fennell has said. Continue reading. . .

Tell us: has the new Wuthering Heights film adaptation inspired you to read Emily Brontë’s novel?
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New York Times
Watch Margot Robbie Take a House Tour in ‘Wuthering Heights’

The screenwriter and director Emerald Fennell narrates a sequence from her film.

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New York Times
Jacob Elordi, Heathcliff and the Controversy Over ‘Wuthering Heights’

The character’s racial identity is at the heart of accusations that the film’s casting is “whitewashing. ” But what does the original novel really say?

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New York Times
‘Wuthering Heights’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director and screenwriter Emerald Fennell narrates a sequence from her film featuring Margot Robbie, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver and Hong Chau.

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El Pais
'Wuthering Heights': They can't live without each other? Well, okay

Even though that love is meant to be so abrasive, I don't feel moved or burned by what I see and hear in Emerald Fennell's film

'Wuthering Heights': They can't live without each other? Well, okay
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The Guardian
Feathers, lace and Jacob Elordi’s gold tooth: Wuthering Heights premieres in Australia – in pictures

Elordi and co-star Margot Robbie walked the carpet at Sydney’s State Theatre on Thursday night for Emerald Fennell’s lavish, hyper-stylised adaptation of Emily Brontë’s doomed romance Continue reading. . .

Feathers, lace and Jacob Elordi’s gold tooth: Wuthering Heights premieres in Australia – in pictures
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by Alan Sked

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by John Bistline

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bistline.bsky.social
Wuthering Heights premieres tomorrow. Fun fact: The Brontë sisters may have died young because their drinking water was literally contaminated by an overfull graveyard next door. #GothicAF
February 12, 2026 at 8:58 PM
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