In Review: “Wuthering Heights”

by | Feb 20, 2026

Written by Louis Pelingen

Spoiler warning

When she was 14, Emerald Fennell got her hands on reading her very first book – Emily Brontë’s classic novel, Wuthering Heights. It tells the story of Catherine and Heathcliff, the two main leads, who have fallen in love throughout the novel as it unfolds across heavy themes of abuse, race, fractured social class, and other crushing emotions that spurred a thorny conversation surrounding the plot that these two characters are heavily involved in. Of course, given the enthralled stasis of impressionable teenagers, the overarching sternness is not what captivated her. To her, the gratuitously romantic and sexual appetite that Catherine and Heathcliff have shown is an important emotional becoming for her entire life. It’s a life-changing moment for the young Emerald Fennell, and how that ragged emotionality eventually sprinkles over the way she processes her films later down the line. Messy and tangled, for better and for worse.

Given such a moment in her life, she’s not about to deny the chance of adapting that classic novel… Only if she makes it her own. Throughout the entire process, she’d immediately acknowledge the difficulty of adapting the novel alongside the fact that she won’t end up with the definitive version of it, a state of self-awareness that reflects in her creative ethos. Hence, instead of leaning towards the novel’s accuracy, which explains the decisions she made later on, she essentially looked at her initial experience of first going through the novel and made it the basis of how she leans into her adaptation.

Now, all of this has led to her version of “Wuthering Heights” – double quotations intentionally included – as this is her overall reading of the story, satiating a personal indulgence where her emotions imagine Wuthering Heights as a power fantasy, full of ornate stylism and overtly romantic hubris. Going so far as to the revered pop mind of Charli XCX, the immense star power of Jacob Elordi, Margot Robbie, and Hong Chau, then transforming all of it based on that starry-eyed view of her younger self.

For her, the love between Catherine and Heathcliff is what makes the novel a sticking point, and she emphasizes such pathos across tasteful camera frameworks, decorated costumes, and impassioned color palettes as the plot unfolds. Deliberately painting away Catherine’s wild expressionistic spirit whose love becomes sweeping, yet becomes a testing point when it now revolves around the poor servant Heathcliff and the rich elite Edgar – her husband, whom she swoons over in the beginning. Such love becomes the connective tissue that embroils the talking points of class, sex, and intensity. All of which has tangled into the layers of jealousy between Isabella, the betrayal with Nelly, and the conflicted yearning with Heathcliff that tumbles down later across the film.

As it develops, for a tale of class divide, sexual appetites, and impassioned romanticism, those potent ideas gets tossed in the air as the film starts shedding away its grandeur to present something less evocative, not because of Fennell leaning hard onto those romantic affectations that drastically cuts away the deep-seated thorniness of the novel, but how all this stylism simultaneously pops and deflates. This approach becomes distractingly baffling, as the set design and cinematography become garish, boorish, and lackluster overall. Splitting hairs between emphasizing her pompous vision and reminding of the weight that the plot ultimately carries, a creative choice that creates a push-and-pull conflict throughout the film. It’s saturated, but also understated. The lighting plays into chiaroscuro techniques, but it doesn’t evoke immense highlights as it gets subsumed by the frequent gloomy mist. Additionally, the pacing spends the entirety of its runtime frequently dragging to a dull slow burn, mostly due to plenty of lousy structural moments where Charli XCX’s original songs are placed on top of these mostly fleeting montage sequences, letting these songs tell what is being felt, rather than developing these scenes to speak more.

The problems only deepen, mostly coming through two things. The first one is the performances. For as heavy-hitter as she is, Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Catherine only works wonders when her character gets emotionally intricate; yet throughout, her stately expressiveness does not really play over the initially wild, giddy spirit of Catherine, nor the eventual winding timidness when she starts to starve herself. It becomes a confounding factor as the rest of her main cast performances – notably Hong Chau, and Alison Oliver – completely outshine her, and surprisingly so.

Her fellow lead, Jacob Elordi, also falls weirdly short as Heathcliff. He portrays him tastefully as one-note, an eyebrow-raising moment as his character develops more with spite and terror, expressions that Elordi didn’t fully capture. He does play Heathcliff’s alluring beauty and mystique, but not exactly much when he is in a state of pent-up anger or desperation, essential characteristics that are somehow emphasized as the story progresses.

Yet the main issue here is that Fennell’s personal objectives in her version of “Wuthering Heights” just do not translate as a whole. The aspect of sexual pleasure and sadomasochism becomes a tame gesture, with the former frolicking across close-ups of snail trails, egg yolks, and sweaty backs that would timidly expose montages of healthy and unhealthy pleasures, and the latter minutely utilized as a fragile plot device for Heathcliff to turn into a darker side of himself. Both of which also plaster an underwhelming portrayal of the class divide, where the poor are seen as sexual deviants and the rich consider themselves to be pure. Its intrigue only had its transgressive development when Heathcliff manages to forcibly marry Isabella Linton, both of which tries to one-up each other through sexual domination amidst extremely vanilla kinks.

This leads to Isabella seeing him as a monster. A creature. A devil in disguise. All descriptors that expose who Heathcliff has become from his life experiences: a man who has dealt with physical abuse, emotionally ruined by how he is perceived for his status as a servant, and gets to have his heart broken further due to his clashes with Catherine despite the heartfelt revelations that they’ve gone through. Yet such means to evoke empathy for his tragic experiences didn’t stick the landing. Without further sharpening the connection of the class divide with the sensual desires, this puts a sour note on Heathcliff as a whole. It devolves the intent of seeing him as a romantic who felt like desire is the only tool he has; instead, he is seen as nothing but a studded brute who is aimlessly careless with his desires, and it just makes him less interesting as a character.

The build-up of his heel turn from the last 45 to 30 minutes led to the adaptation getting close to working. The emotional stakes are now in full view when Catherine clutches her fallible emotions upon the return of Heathcliff, leading to sequences of power dynamics, tempting infidelity, and evocative dramatics that only ensnare the tension across the main cast of characters. It’s the only moment where Fennell’s overall vision hits its stride, as it finally plays into the evocatively raving emotions where the tension fully erupts, a much-needed shift from the willowy romantic ploys that diffuse the deeper character dynamics of Catherine and Heathcliff. It results in an observation of their relationship that is emotionally empty, and only grips towards the very end. It’s a tragic attempt at crystallizing their recklessly tangible love.

While it needs to be said that her way of adapting Wuthering Heights into “Wuthering Heights” is no means a bad idea – at the end of the day, she does get what she wanted out of this – the implementations of stylistic flair only trickles down to concepts executed with shallow chains of passion, wearing pop decadence that underscores its exorbitant flaws. It is tasteful as it is airy, memorable as it is forgetful, and elegant as it is hollow. An attempt to turn the novel through the eyes of her romantically impassioned young self, but it becomes less desirable than what Fennell initially imagined. It may have stayed with you through all its fancy decorations, yet it only reaches its height when it is about to shed its glamour, and leaves you with an empty void that can’t be satiated.

In Review: Resurrection

by | Feb 12, 2026

Written by: Louis Pelingen

The concept of a film made as a love letter to cinema becomes an ambitious take that goes both ways: it succeeds in showcasing cinema’s encapsulating beauty, or it fails to do so, as personal indulgence seeps through the cracks. There is no shortage of such a concept, and for good reason. Film becomes a piece that crafts an experience like no other, demanding all your senses as we pay attention to what is being told and remembered on screen. Yet, to make an engrossing concept land becomes an impassioned effort, where grandeur and scope have to come from its rich past, then make meaning of it all in the present.

Yet, throughout the ebb and flow of Bi Gan’s recently crafted film, ‘Resurrection’, he aims to shake things up a lot more. Crafting a film piece that delves into immense depths, allowing for more layered insights surrounding the essence of cinema and history to erupt in vast fashion. He still showcases the overall decadence of its cinematic power, but he’s also willing to focus more on the fractures and weight that can only be pulled together within the process of filmmaking as a whole.

From beginning to end, you can’t help but be invited to the technical masquerade that spills forth from every seam. In each chapter, there’s a variation towards the colors, camera shots, and visual techniques that contain the stories being told into their own segments. Emphasizing different temperaments and dynamics in every passing turn, where Bi Gan’s creative imprint towards synchronizing the stylistic visuals with meaningful tonal flair is masterful. For the entire three-hour runtime, you can’t keep your eyes away from the marvellous technicolor that’s on display, immersing you into the meaningful thoughts and emotions that are being placed down.

It is all through what the film imparts that becomes its strongest aspect. Putting the focus of the story within a future where dreaming is completely surrendered, and immortality is ever so prioritized. Yet, through the presence of derilients – people who still have the capability to dream – they become a cusp of hope that’s been searched by rogue dreamers known as the other ones / fantasmers. One such derilient (played by Jackson Yee) has been discovered by an other one (played by Shu Qi), and as a way to fulfill her responsibility, she inserts a film within the derilient, letting him go through the lives of individuals in various moments of time and circumstances. It is within this chronological structure, paired with the technical marvel alongside gripping performances, that fuels the sense of place and voice that this film continues to immerse within. Where all the fleeting individuals and their melancholic situations who lived across these set pieces allure the senses, and encourage the derilient to dream further across time and space, with eras that echoes around Chinese history and Buddhist thought.

Yet, as the film continues to unfold these stories, it also leaps into layered statements that become ‘Resurrection’s important centrepiece. There is an emphasis on how film as a whole not just carries stirring beauty, but also an imaginative essence that glows so brightly. A subtle acknowledgement of how the cast and crew become responsible for the heartbeat of the film that keeps on breathing, and provides an immersive feeling that can’t be taken away easily. It all becomes a reminder that allows people to dream amidst their limited lives, wherein, despite witnessing the conclusion of a film, the experiences do not stop there. There is always a resonance that will bubble up every time they remind themselves of what went on in such a cinematic narrative, and remember the moments that stuck with them.

With all that being said, this buoyant thematic scope increases the chances of landing gloriously and falling hard. Yet even with those risks laid down upon Bi Gan, he manages to walk that tightrope of crafting a script that synthesizes the concepts of Chinese history, buddhist philosophy, and the evolving flow of filmmaking and flesh out all their evocative details in full throttle – even with the constraints of developing the last chapter in its best capacity. Such an overwhelmingly breathtaking and reflective concept can only be finetuned by someone who knows what they’re doing and still fleshes everything out with or without such struggles. It might be a bit elusive to get through at spots given its dreamy and maze-like structure, but once given the time to process, it’s where the beauty of Resurrection surfaces. Your consciousness is elated. Your senses are stimulated.

Thus, within Resurrection, Bi Gan lets the cinematic heft become not just an ode to film itself, but also a reflection. One echoed through the historical and emotional depths of China, where its richness magnificently goes hand in hand with the constant evolution and magnetic essence of film as an artistic process and emotional fragment. Pulling all such verbose concepts with an approach that is outwardly vast and curious.

Even if there is such a conclusion, the important matter is to simmer the films that we take in, and engage in conversation with others. Through such acts, we can only find the emotions and passions resurrected once more. Such is the grand escapades of film itself.