It’s the kind of all-consuming love that will drive you mad, transform you into a vengeful monster and possibly endure beyond the grave. To my tender teenage heart, this seemed deeply romantic when I first encountered Wuthering Heights at school.
I was hardly alone in feeling so struck by Emily Brontë’s classic novel. Emerald Fennell, the film-maker behind a new big-screen reimagining of the book, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, has taken a selective approach to the source material but hasn’t skimped on its intensity. “What I wanted to make was something that distilled the feeling that I had when I was 14, when I read it,” she explains in a promotional interview. “It’s what it is to be in love to a catastrophic degree.”
Catastrophe is the word. The obsession portrayed by the lovers in Wuthering Heights is as inviting and dangerous as the stormy Yorkshire moors on which it plays out. Judging by the trailer, Fennell’s film captures exactly the lust, longing and sweet misery that I lapped up in the book – which, at the time, seemed vastly more appealing than a more level-headed and nuanced relationship. This kind of love is elemental and simple – in the way that a bulldozer is simple – and on-screen, in the hands of Elordi and Robbie as the lovers Heathcliff and Catherine, it looks utterly glorious. Who wouldn’t want to be gripped in a windswept embrace by one (or both) of these two?
Indeed, the return of this wildest of love stories in 2026 feels like a corrective to the dispiriting state of real-life courtship. Dating apps deliver more admin than chemistry; Vogue recently declared boyfriends to be “embarrassing”; too many singles have adopted a cool detachment for fear of appearing cringe; and celibacy is now an uncontroversial lifestyle choice, prompting some commentators to lament that we’re living through a “sex recession”. In stark contrast to today’s era of shoulder-shrugging ambivalence, the tagline of “Wuthering Heights” (the film title styled with quotation marks to emphasise Fennell’s take on the story) begs us to “Come undone”.
This rallying call is echoed by the actors who embody the film’s central romance. “I hope this film reignites passion in people and reminds us how much we miss love, need love, want love … Help us dream of future loves and recall past ones or unrequited ones,” says Elordi. “And not just romantic love, because Emerald has delivered an all-encompassing take on this one vital emotion that people today sometimes think it’s better to hide from or turn away from. I hope it unlocks that part inside us all.”
That the film offers something we are craving is also borne out by other recent cultural phenomena. Some have identified it a “new yearning” in TV hits such as Heated Rivalry, a tale of closeted gay ice hockey players who fall madly in love, and last year’s The Summer I Turned Pretty. Meanwhile, the Bookseller reports that the “romantasy” genre – the publishing industry’s hottest fiction category of recent years – is still holding strong. “Romance has always been a huge passion for readers and maybe not served as well through traditional publishing – as a genre it can be quite derided,” explains Mhairi McFarlane, an author of romantic comedies. She believes the explosion of romantic storytelling reflects the empowerment of fans thanks to social media.
Indeed, all of these hits have fan communities around them, and I suspect Fennell’s take on Wuthering Heights will be no different: an ideal film to watch with a group of friends so you can dissect every moment together afterwards.
And there is much for friends to discuss and debate. After all, Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest love stories of all time, but like every grand love story, it comes with a large dose of tumult, tragedy and red flags. Fennell’s portrayal of unbridled obsession may speak to the moment, but nobody should be finding relationship goals in the more destructive aspects of Cathy and Heathcliff’s love story. You could read Wuthering Heights as a cautionary tale; it certainly doesn’t offer much in the way of healthy boundaries. McFarlane’s own novel Don’t You Forget About Me begins with her then-teenage protagonists debating Heathcliff’s “creepy” behaviour, and much of Brontë’s novel follows him wreaking havoc in response to heartbreak.
Nevertheless, it’s OK to just indulge in the yearning, says Emma Firth, a writer and the host of the literary salon Rejection is Romantic – and herself a proud yearner. “It’s less to do with a want for those types of men or individuals, and more to do with a desire to return to a past version of ourselves,” she suggests. “I’m thinking specifically of the teenage version of yourself, who was very much full of longing and hopefulness, at a time when you had less life experience and were living in a bit more of a fantasy world.”
Wasn’t that dreamy, in the years before we woke up and smelled the coffee of mediocre first dates? Didn’t ghosts at the window feel more exciting than being ghosted by a greying manchild? Ditto the grand romantic gestures portrayed in “Wuthering Heights”, such as galloping on horseback to meet your beloved or writing an actual love letter with an actual pen. And isn’t exquisite agony on the moors still more appealing than that ongoing conversation with your partner about whether their ingrowing toenail needs to be seen by a doctor? In adult life, we have earned this emotional escapism – and in the midst of the mundane, we deserve a couple of hours of coming moderately undone in front of a glorious big cinema screen.
“Wuthering Heights” in cinemas 13 February. Book your tickets now
