Emerald Fennell leaves audiences shivering in antici… pation in her new take on Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights, which began streaming on HBO Max today. In fact, the lead-up to the sex in the new Wuthering Heights movie is so delicious—so scorching hot— that the actual sex scenes feel like a bit of a let down.

Written and directed by Fennell, the 2026 Wuthering Heights movie was marketed as sexy, outlandish, and downright scandalous. Oscar-nominated actress Margot Robbie stars as Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of a wealthy, land-owning English family, who falls in love with her family’s lower-class foster son, Heathcliff (played by Jacob Elordi, who also starred in Fennell’s Saltburn). The attraction between Catherine and Heathcliff is palpable. But Catherine feels pressure to marry their wealthy neighbor Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), in order to save her family from financial ruin caused by her father’s various addictions.

And so, the first half of the film, Catherine and Heathcliff get by on lingering looks, loaded silences, and a number of almost kisses. The unresolved sexual tension simmers and simmers and simmers. Just when you think it’s finally about to boil over, Fennell yanks the pot off the stove. They deny their desires again and again. Eventually, yes, there is a pay-off. But honestly? The build-up is hotter.

No where is that more true than in the scene where Catherine, overcome by a fit of lust, rushes out of the house in the middle of breakfast. She doesn’t walk very far—just hides behind a nearby boulder, and begins to touch herself.

Unfortunately, (or, indeed, perhaps fortunately), Heathcliff follows. He overhears her, and knows exactly what she’s up to. Rather than leave her be like a gentleman, he lingers. He listens. He yearns.

Eventually Heathcliff comes to his senses and backs away, but, of course, he stumbles over some rocks, and Catherine hears him. Mortified, Catherine lashes out at Heathcliff in embarrassment. She shoves grass and dirt in his face, insisting that this is his doing.

“How is it my doing?” Heathcliff questions, amusement in his voice.

But he knows, of course, that it’s his doing because Catherine is simply so horny for him.

Heathcliff grabs Catherine’s arm to halt her assault on him. He runs his nose down her skin, breathing her in. He puts her fingers in his mouth, and gives them a cheeky little suck. He promises to follow her “like a dog to the end of the world.” Then, in the sexiest move of the film, he lifts her up by the strings of her corset, and holds her, hovering mere centimeters from his mouth.

Logically, I know it can’t be comfortable to be suspended in the air by one’s corset, but it’s hard to think about logistics when both Robbie and Elordi are panting into each other’s mouths and positively shaking with lust. And it’s made all the hotter when Catherine denies them both. She leans in to Heathcliff’s mouth, and we’re sure she’s going for the kiss. Instead, she whispers—practically right onto his tongue—”Put me down.”

Then, more certain: “If you care for me at all, put me down.”

Heathcliff puts her down. Its a perfect balm of romance to soothe our frustration at the lack of kiss. Heathcliff does care for Cathy, and so he puts her down. Soon after, in this version of the story, Heathcliff overhears Cathy say that to marry him would be to degrade himself, and he flees the estate. They don’t see each other again until five years later, when Catherine is married to Linton and pregnant with his child. Ack! They came so close!

That said, Heathcliff does return, and these two star-crossed lovers do, in fact, kiss passionately, and have a lot of sex. I’m not saying it’s not hot watching Robbie and Elordi mash their mouths together and caress each other’s bodies. It is not the wild, explicit sex hinted at by the film’s marketing campaign—most of it happens via a montage, with no nudity, not even butts—but it’s still simulated sex between two people who are paid to be sexy. It’s hot.

But Fennell simply never tops the eroticism of the moment where they almost kiss. Maybe that’s the point. This version of Wuthering Heights is all about the fantasizing, the yearning, the what-if. For Heathcliff and Cathy, the fantasy will always be hotter than the reality.