Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi Are More Fun When They’re Weird

The highlight of the Wuthering Heights press tour so far has nothing to do with Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, nothing to do with stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s chemistry, and everything to do with Cher. In a moment of organized chaos on The Graham Norton Show, with guests including Robbie and Elordi as well as Amanda Seyfried, Johannes Radebe, and Jacob Alon, Elordi is goaded into doing an impression of the singer, hitting but one single note in the chorus of “Believe.” He sings the word in a tone that can be described only as Kermitesque, and the entire couch bursts into laughter. The moment isn’t trying to sell us on Wuthering Heights; it’s just showing us how truly strange and game Elordi is — something the movie (and its marketing) should be leaning into twice as much.

Many a romantic film of late — comedy or otherwise — has marketed itself on the innate chemistry of its two leads. Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney briefly convinced the world of an actual affair. Jessie Buckley told Paul Mescal she could “drink him like water.” Even if these professional relationships are strictly platonic (and just about all of them are), the press tours start to feel like ads for dating apps: You too could have what they have. It feels odd, in turn, to hear Robbie talk about her and her girlfriends “frothing at the mouth like rabid dogs” at the sight of her co-star in the movie. How many times does she have to explain that the scene where Heathcliff shields Cathy’s eyes from the rain was based on something Elordi did in real life? Both Robbie and Elordi prove themselves infinitely more likable and compelling as actors and romantic leads when they accentuate what makes them unlike their peers. Robbie is at her finest when regaling Charli XCX or Jessie Ware and her mom about her clubbing days. Elordi should be in a perpetual state of explaining to Lynn Hirschberg that a drawing he made is called Goon King. If Wuthering Heights really wants its viewers to “come undone,” as the posters suggest, the film should take a page out of its own book (adaptation) and embrace the chaos and the weirdness and leave all conventionality at the door.

The same is true in the context of the film. In Wuthering Heights the book, Cathy and Heathcliff are freaks. She is a selfish, spoiled brat; he is brutish, unpredictable, and mysterious. These are not easy people to fall in love with, and thus what happens to and between them is messy and unsatisfying. To bill the film’s central couple as an undeniable romantic pair is just one facet of what Wuthering Heights ought to be doing. Mostly, it should really hammer home just how bizarre these two actors and their characters really are.

The initial courtship between Cathy and Heathcliff feels most thrilling when they’re doing anything but wooing each other. Placing eggs in each other’s beds? Horrible and undeniable. Spying on the stable hand and maid doing it in the barn? Probably the hottest thing Emerald Fennell puts into her movie. These moments work because they defy expectation, encouraging the actors to react to each other’s strangeness rather than play off their melancholy. By the time Catherine and Heathcliff start having sex, the whole affair is fairly repetitive and unimaginative. Like dogs with a stick, they seem to have no clue what to do with each other once they have what they want. Wuthering Heights is far more fun to watch when they’re separate and pissed about it and can indulge in their individual perversions. The longer the film stretches on, the more fun it is to see these two operate in their own bizarre, miserable punishments: their decaying homes, their rotting souls.
One of the first things Fennell told Robbie, who also produced the film (her third collaboration in this way with Fennell), was that she wanted her adaptation of Wuthering Heights to be “this generation’s Titanic.” There’s a romantic film positively gargantuan in scope that inspired hundreds of thousands of obsessives, but these two films could have aligned in being love stories about complete weirdos. Jack and Rose are oddballs, neither fitting into their respective societal slots. When they’re together onscreen, they push each other to extremes: rule breaking, rudeness, and eventually sex. When Cathy and Heathcliff get together, it’s almost as if they’re forced to maintain an equilibrium neither can stand. It’s strange to realize, as the film winds down, that Elordi’s chemistry with Alison Oliver, who plays Isabella, is far more intriguing than whatever he does with Robbie, in part because Cathy sits between Heathcliff and Isabella no matter what they do. His continued punishment of Isabella delights and surprises — just like when he hit that Cher note.