Wuthering Heights

Cert: 15, 2hrs 16mins

Emerald Fennell is a film-maker who loves to shock, as anyone who saw Promising Young Woman and Saltburn can attest.

And right from the start, she’s at it again with her startling reimagining of Emily Bronte’s classic novel Wuthering Heights.

As the opening credits fade to a black screen, a creaking soundtrack suggests we’re about to witness some sort of sexual encounter.

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Wuthering Heights stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in the leading roles of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliffe

 
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It sees Oscar nominated Aussie actress Margot Robbie (pictured) directed by her Barbie co-star Emerald Fennell

 
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Co-star and fellow Aussie Jacob Elordi (pictured) is also an Oscar nominee – but viewers may recognise him from TV series Euphoria

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But oh no, as the pictures begin, we realise we’ve been tricked. It’s actually a public hanging. Fennell has certainly set out her cinematic stall – sex and death it is.

Bronte purists are likely to be appalled by the radical liberties taken with the actually quite difficult-to-read book.

An entire generation is dispensed with, iconic bits of plot disappear, and one key character – Joseph, a cranky, preachy puritan manservant in the book – is not just two decades younger but… well, let’s just say he’s definitely done with the puritanism.

The monochrome Wuthering Heights house itself seems to have been partially hewn from a cliff-face of Yorkshire coal, and the manor Thrushcross Grange is one-part Alice In Wonderland, one part 1980s music video.

Yes, I had to stifle a giggle at our first glimpse of Margot Robbie, corseted bosom set to stun, as Cathy.

 
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The newly released film is a reimagining of Emily Bronte’s classic novel

 
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In the story, Margot’s character Cathy weds Edgar Linton (who is portrayed here by Shazad Latif)

But I soon found much to enjoy, not least the sheer confidence of Fennell’s exuberant, uninhibited film-making.

It may be Robbie (who Fennell starred with in Barbie) and Jacob Elordi (who was in Saltburn and here plays the glowering Heathcliff) who take centre stage, but do look out for Martin Clunes being rather marvellous as Cathy’s mercurial, hard-drinking father and Shazad Latif, who brings a dignity and indeed libido to the often rather wet role of Edgar, the poor man Cathy marries.

Libido? Yes, there is quite a lot of sex in Fennell’s version, as you may possibly have heard, one or two moments of which might actually frighten the horses.

But this is a 21st-century woman’s reworking of a 19th-century woman’s novel, and if romping in the heather is not quite your cup of tea, there’s always the costumes and production design to admire, which, from the fateful wedding onwards, are magnificent, albeit in the same over-the-top style as the rest of this fabulously fearless but slightly bonkers production.