This bold reinvention of Emily Brontë’s novel is ‘sexy, dramatic and swoonily romantic’

Robbie turns up in the first of many bright red-and-white dresses, and her performance is magnificent, making Cathy wild and selfish but with a conscience, and an innocence beneath her sense of entitlement. And forget her age. Fennell simply makes the characters older. Mr Earnshaw even says, “She’s already well past spinsterhood”. Elordi embodies Heathcliff’s dashing, bad-boy energy, even when stuck with a stringy-haired wig. Heathcliff is more than a shirtless, sweaty hunk, although he is often that. Elordi reveals how defensive and easily wounded he is, how he resents his status as a servant.

As Fennell surfaces the sexual desire Brontë could only hint at, she creates a very long tease. Cathy and Heathcliff throw hungry glances at each other. Each gets a masturbation scene. When he overhears the practical Cathy say “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff” – one of the novel’s famous lines – he runs away from Wuthering Heights before hearing her add how much she loves him.

At times the film’s over-the-top choices seem kitschy. Heathcliff rides on horseback against a bright orange sky, long hair flying in the wind as if he escaped from the cover of a romance novel. But overall Fennell uses stylised images well. After Heathcliff leaves, an overhead view shows Cathy slumped on the floor so that all we see is her billowing red skirt, her despair and grief revealed in a single shot.

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Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), the rich man Cathy marries, is attractive and devoted. She likes him; he’s just not Heathcliff. Alison Oliver gives a standout, lively performance as Isabella, Edgar’s grown yet childish ward, who adores Cathy and creepily makes a doll with strands of Cathy’s actual hair.

The now-prosperous Heathcliff returns years later, looking like a gentleman. He and Cathy have sex on the windswept moor, in her carriage, and after he climbs through her bedroom window. It is all steamy but discreetly shot. When his jealousy turns more cruel than ever, though, and he manipulates the innocent Isabella into becoming his chattel, the change is far too abrupt.