How did Wuthering Heights become the most divisive film of the year?

In the trailer, Ruby is seen doing some very suggestive bread-making actions, her cheeks flushed and her chest heaving, as she recalls Elordi’s bare torso. Then there are shots of a corset being pulled forcefully, of Elordi taking off his shirt, and of someone putting his finger in the mouth of a fish. The typical response to all this lust and debauchery was an article in The Spinoff titled ‘Everyone hates the new Wuthering Heights trailer, and here’s why’. “Vinyl takes a piece of art and reduces it to its finest form,” Claire Mabey wrote.

There were plenty of issues apart from the overt sexualisation as well. The trailer was largely anachronistic, with Charli When a clip of the film was released last month, the actors themselves were mocked for being outdated. “They sure had great dentists back then,” one YouTube commenter said. Another said: “I love Margot, but she looks like she’s about to pull out her iPhone any minute.”

Causes of hatred

But these quibbles raise some big questions, the first of which is: So what? Why doesn’t Fennell create her own version of Wuthering Heights? If Clueless can set the plot of Jane Austen in 1990s California, and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet can do the same for Shakespeare, why should we care about costume design?

There are two obvious answers, one of which is suggested by the fact that in the trailer, Robbie’s Cathy looked more stylish than any on-screen character since, well, Saltburn.

Fennell’s last film, Saltburn, is set in a stately home, and one of the best things about it was that the writer-director seemed to know her upper-class characters intimately. There’s no mystery about how she manages it: As the daughter of famed jewelry designer Theo Fennell, she grew up in gilded circles. As Patrick Sproul put it in Dazed, “There aren’t many 18-year-olds having their birthday party photographed by Tatler and attended by Delevingne, several Guinness heirs, several members of the peerage, and Sting’s daughter.” In short, luxury vinyl. In fact, her background is so distinguished that when she played Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown – now known as Queen Camilla – she didn’t have to look any grander than she does in ordinary life.