Wuthering Nightmares: Critics Torch Margot Robbie's "Exhausting" Sex Scenes in Bronte Barbie Meltdown

Let’s get one thing straight: Emily Brontë did not die in 1848 for Jacob Elordi to be called a “wet-eyed Mills & Boon mirage.”

And yet, here we are.

Emerald Fennell’s long-awaited, much-hyped, loosely-adapted *Wuthering Heights* has finally screened for critics ahead of its release this week, and the response is not so much a divided house as it is a full-blown moors turf war. One side is clutching pearls. The other is throwing five stars like confetti. And somewhere in the middle, Margot Robbie is crying in every single scene—on purpose, and apparently with great joy.

The Savage Verdicts

Let’s start with the bloodshed.

*The Independent*’s Clarisse Loughrey fired the first shot, awarding the film a single star and describing Robbie and Elordi’s performances as “almost pushed to the border of pantomime.” Elordi’s Heathcliff? A “Mills & Boon mirage.” For the uninitiated, that’s the literary equivalent of being called a Harlequin romance cover model—beautiful, airbrushed, and utterly devoid of substance.

Then came Kevin Maher at *The Times*, who delivered the phrase that will now follow Robbie for the rest of her press tour: “Brontë Barbie.”

Let that marinate. After *Barbie* grossed $1.4 billion and earned Robbie a producer credit on the highest-grossing film of 2023, her reward is to be reduced to the doll she played in a wig. Critics are accusing Fennell of making a “vapid” film that “fails to reflect the complexity of the greatest gothic novel in English literature.” Ouch.

Peter Bradshaw at *The Guardian* joined the pile-on, calling it an “emotionally hollow, bodice-ripping misfire.” He described the film as “quasi-erotic, pseudo-romantic, and then ersatz-sad, a club night of mock emotion.”

A *club night*? On the Yorkshire moors? That’s not just a bad review—that’s a murder ballad.

But Wait, There’s More Exhaustion

Perhaps the most damning critique comes from Collider, which took direct aim at the film’s intimate scenes. We’re not talking “steamy.” We’re talking “exhausting.” Apparently, the sex scenes “overstay their welcome.”

This is fascinating, because just weeks ago, Robbie was gleefully telling reporters that she and Elordi “kiss everywhere.” Not *everywhere* everywhere, presumably, but enough to leave critics reaching for the remote.

“They never really kissed in the book, but we kiss a lot,” Robbie said. “We kiss everywhere. And there’s so many times where he just picks me up and puts me in a tree.”

Heathcliff as an arborist. Cathy as a koala. It’s a choice.

The Other Side of the Moor

And yet.

If you only read the one-star reviews, you’d think Fennell had personally defaced Brontë’s grave. But the five-star crowd is just as loud—and they’re using much prettier words.

Robbie Collin at *The Telegraph* bestowed the film with a perfect score, calling it “resplendently lurid, oozy and wild.” Oozy! In a good way! He described it as “an obsessive film about obsession” that “hungrily embroils the viewer in its own mad compulsions.”

Meanwhile, the BBC’s Caryn James praised Fennell’s “extravagant swirl” of sexy, dramatic, melodramatic, occasionally comic, and “swoonily romantic” tones.

So which is it? A vapid Barbie fever dream or a lurid, oozy masterpiece?

Perhaps the answer lies in the question: this *is* Emerald Fennell we’re talking about. The woman who gave us *Promising Young Woman* and *Saltburn*. She doesn’t do subtle. She does provocation. She does discomfort. She does whatever the hell that bathtub scene was in *Saltburn*.

Expecting a restrained, faithful adaptation of a 178-year-old novel from Fennell is like expecting a quiet night in from Heathcliff himself. It was never going to end well—or quietly.

The Robbie Defense

For her part, Margot Robbie seems blissfully unbothered. In the same interview where she confessed to weeping through every scene, she also admitted she *loved* playing a character who “swings from one wild emotion to another in an instant.”

“My character essentially cries in every single scene, but no, it was a joy,” she said.

That’s the thing about Robbie. She’s been counted out before. She was “too beautiful” to play Harley Quinn. She was “crazy” to bet her own producing money on a doll movie. She’s spent a decade proving critics wrong.

Whether *Wuthering Heights* becomes her first genuine misfire or simply another chapter in her unpredictable career remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: nobody is ignoring it.

The Final Verdict?

The audience hasn’t spoken yet. When the film opens wide this weekend, real ticket-buyers—not just critics with deadlines and a vendetta against bodice-ripping—will decide if this is a disaster or a cult classic in the making.

Is it possible that a film can be both “vapid” and “resplendently lurid”? Can Elordi be both a wet-eyed mirage and the perfect Heathcliff for a generation raised on *Euphoria*?

Maybe. Or maybe the Yorkshire moors are simply big enough for both opinions.

Either way, someone get Emily Brontë a drink. She’s going to need it.