Wuthering Heights gets Saltburn treatment as fans drool over first trailer

The trailer for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights has arrived and fans are convinced the film pays homage to Saltburn in its retelling Emily Brontë's source material. A Charli XCX tune sets the scene for the first public glimpse of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in an erotically charged and moody ‘love’ story.

The which was released on Wednesday, September 3 is a minute-and-a-half of palpable sexual tension, according to viewers. Featuring whip-cracking, heavy breathing, kneading hands all alongside near-garish displays of wealth, Saltburn director Fennell’s take on the Emily Brontë classic is a bit familiar.

“There’s completely no way. WTH is this. The saltburnification of Wuthering Heights is crazyyyyy” wrote one social media user. The sentiment has been echoed widely across social media in the day since the trailer dropped.

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“It looks [very] eggplant splash emojis for Brontë,” wrote another user. Despite the joking criticism, many say it hasn’t deterred their plans to watch the film, even if they are already planning to come in critically.

Some even defended the bold creative direction, likening it to Sofia Coppola’s riotous 2006 film, Marie Antoinette, which showcased a young Kirsten Dunst playing a ‘teen queen’. The film was considered too airy for the Cannes critics nearly twenty years ago, but has become an irreverent hit.

Other fans have accused Brontë-obsessives of missing the plot, literally. One X user shared that many people are melting down over the “inaccuracy of a clearly purposeful throwback, technicolour period pulp romance”. The pulp romance element of the trailer is evident even in the title font and poster.

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While the reactions are mixed at the moment, the buzz has many excited to make their own final judgements. “It looks gorgeous but I wonder if they made everyone just a bit too pretty,” wrote one X user, “Wuthering Heights does contain Gothic Romance elements but it also is naturalistic, brutal, and ugly at times. The contrast is what makes the tale so compelling. I guess we will see.”

The film has been raising creative concerns since its casting announcement, most recently following the first test screening in Dallas, Texas. After the viewing, the film was branded by some as "tonally abrasive" and "sexually explicit".

The movie reportedly opens with a public hanging in which the “condemned man ejaculates mid-execution”. The scene descends into chaos as the crowd becomes frenzied, all while a nun “fondles the corpse’s visible erection” (somewhat evocative of Saltburn’s infamous graveyard scene).

The film goes on to portray a “BDSM-tinged” encounter, several “clinical” masturbation scenes and a splurge of "hyper-sexualised" imagery.

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