Welcome to Infernos, Heathcliff
The new Wuthering Heights adaptation makes complete sense when you find out Margot Robbie used to live in Clapham.
2026 is delivering above expectations on the book to screen adaptations.
We’re only in February and we’ve had half the internet getting their knickers on a twist over Hamnet, Heated Rivalry and the first four episodes of season 4 of Bridgerton. The stakes have been significantly raised with the release of the much anticipated adaptation of Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë’s only novel, by Emerald Fennell, the posh woman in the cottage of British cinema.
Or if you really want to be pedantic “Wuthering Heights” because in case you have been lucky enough to miss the discourse, rivers of virtual ink have flowed debating whether this sui generis adaptation should be called at all like the novel it is very freely based on. Hence the inverted commas.
I personally believe people have a lot of free time in their hands if this is something they are losing sleep over.
As someone with a soft spot for book adaptations, after having just finished the novel and watched the film last weekend, I have no issue with how this particular adaptation departs from the original or the liberties it has taken with the story. After having being sorely disappointed in the past, I now treat screen adaptations independently from their source material and sleep better.
All adaptations -especially of classic novels that deal with intergenerational stories and complex social issues- do that to a certain extent as they need to condense hundreds of pages into a reasonable length film our frazzled attention spans can endure.
Each interpretation may help a new generation of readers to approach for the first time the original work that has inspired it and refresh the story, as it happened with the latest adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo with Pierre Niney released in 2024, which can only be a good thing.
In fact, sales of Wuthering Heights have skyrocketed in the UK although I suspect they’ve been motivated by a desire to partake in the hot takes discourse judging from the amount of pieces that have appeared in record time dissecting every minutia of this film.
Having said all the above, I do struggle to envision how the messy pastiche that is Emerald Fennell’s final product, which looks like the output of a two-hander between a drunken Wes Anderson and a drugged Yorgos Lanthimos working under duress to bring to life a script written by a 14 year old who spends her days daydreaming about her crush and watching Kate Bush videos on MTV will inspire people to read Wuthering Heights.
However, I don’t want to presume my experience of this film has been the same as yours. The only thing I can say is that by all means go to the cinema and judge by yourself but proceed at your own risk. I have enough on my plate already trying to forget I’ve watched this film of my own free will.
If you are in search of a serious and in-depth analysis about this specific adaptation and the source material and the complexities that Fennell’s film doesn’t address, then I highly recommend reading this piece by Heather Parry
If, on the other hand, you only want to see whether it’s possible to lead a normal life after the shambolic assault on your senses that watching Emerald Fennell’s adaptation is, then please stick around because I am going to put an end to the debate on whether Wuthering Heights is just one maximalist hallucination dressed as art too complex for us to understand or simply a terrible film deprived of any depth and no one wants to be the first to admit it.
Spoler alert: It’s neither, but people can’t see it because they’re looking at it from the wrong perspective. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
In order to fully understand the significance of the revelation I am about to make you need to bear in mind that Wuthering Heights, a story that happens in Yorkshire, of all places, has two Australian actors as leads. The link between these two corners of the earth is as thin and brittle as my trust in British train schedules.
My only observation on this is that if you cast Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, two of the most attractive people currently alive, to portray doomed lovers make sure they at least understand their job is to pretend they’re into each other in the film. I don’t want to get ahead of myself because even their lack of chemistry, as well as their being Australian, has a well founded raison d’être.
However, we don’t need any PR antics to manipulate us into believing there might be something between them when we know damn well Robbie is a producer in this movie (and she’s produced every Emerald Fennell film to date) and wants her money back. We can all understand that - it’s not our first Anyone But You PR rodeo.
When they’re not pushing the marketing machine, Robbie and Elordi are a delight to watch and radiate lovely siblings energy. Maybe that’s why I can’t see any romantic spark between them despite how easy they’re both on the eye.
And now it’s time for the big reveal that will blow your mind about Wuthering Heights and why it’s turned out the way it has: Margot Robbie used to live in Clapham and was a regular at Infernos.
I know, right?
I’m aware this mind-blowing revelation may only be appreciated in London so let me elaborate.
For those unfamiliar with London topography, Clapham is an area in South London (usually referred to as the wrong side of the river by those of us who live North) and known for two things: Its impressive concentration of Australian and New Zealand population and Infernos, where said populations can be found in the wild.
You’d be seriously mistaken to think that Infernos is just another club. Infernos is the club. A rite of passage that anyone who lives in London, regardless of their postcode, must visit at least once in their lifetime. It’s the layman’s night out Mecca. A Saturday night there is an experience that can either scar you for life or make you immune to anything you witness thereafter. As the saying goes, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you return to Infernos.” Heathcliff would have loved it there.
Such is its gravitational pull that the first time I ended up there I can’t even remember how it happened. One moment I was having a very quiet Christmas lunch with my old colleagues in a Portuguese restaurant in Stockwell and the next thing I knew my former boss was getting us our third round of tequila shots at Infernos and everyone was dancing. I got home at around 3 am, my phone had been long dead, and my ex boyfriend was about to call the police when I finally opened the door to our flat. He didn’t speak to me for three days. I still smile when I remember that night.
So when Margot Robbie recently talked about the reason she and her husband Tom Ackley (who at the time was her flatmate) lived in Clapham was to be close to Infernos, it reframed my viewing experience of Wuthering Heights and gave it a whole new meaning. Or to be precise a meaning. Any.
After this revelation it is obvious we’ve been looking at Emerald Fennell’s adaptation from the wrong angle. I too have believed the lie that this is her interpretation of the novel she read when she was 14 and which includes things she wished had happened but didn’t. Utter bollocks. Fake news. Complete rubbish.
People who are losing their minds over Fennell inserting herself into the story are wasting their precious time.
Wuthering Heights, the Emily Brontë novel, is the product of a woman’s imagination crafted during her nights in. Wuthering Heights, the Margot Robbie film, is the natural result of a woman’s lived experience during her nights out at Infernos, which in case you haven’t had the privilege of visiting is one of the best places where you can bring to life your own gothic dreams as you’re bound to experience a mix of horror, romance and melodrama intertwined with elements of the supernatural in a truly eerie and decaying setting. That carpeted dance floor has seen things we humans can’t even imagine.
Once you look at Fennell’s film through that lenses it makes complete sense why certain choices have been made. It’s all a throwback to Margot’s happy days in Clapham.
Nostalgia is a big driver in the entertainment industry and not only. Suffice as an example how everyone seems to have started 2026 reminiscing about 2016. And you know what Robbie was doing that year? Probably the same thing as me: Having a blast at Infernos.
The opening scene in Wuthering Heights where people get aroused at he sight of a hanged man? Isabella being transformed into a kinky submissive wife? Cathy sneakily enjoying a bit of self-pleasure in the moors? People putting their finger inside a fish? Light BDSM when you think no one is watching? I couldn’t make head or tail of any of it until I remembered Margot Robbie has surely seen worse on a random Tuesday night out at Infernos and this was just a collection of her treasured memories from that time.
Besides, if there is a place where the Cathys and Heathcliffs of this world gravitate towards each other effortlessly is a London night club, where they’re a dime a dozen. Whatever their toxic souls are made of, at Infernos they’re all the same. Plus they also communicate in Australian (and New Zealand) vernacular, their words coming out in a wandering accent when they approach their preys with the alcohol-fueled delusion that will make them see passion where there is mild annoyance at best.
Exactly what Robbie and Elordi have skillfully conveyed in their performances. The attention to detail, when you have this context in mind, is impressive.
In fact, the only way I could see any hint of attraction between Cathy and Heathcliff in the film would be with a few drinks myself that would distort my interpreation of reality, which is probably a clever way Margot Robbie has found to replicate those sweaty night outs when everything gets a bit blurry and she’s watched her share of fellow Aussies sloppily hooking up with people who’ve rather be in the comfort of their own bed (perhaps all the way back in Australia) than been tampered with by strangers in South London to the echoes of Riptide.
The critics who have complained Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is a two hour long videoclip aren’t completely wrong. This is Margot reliving the time of her life, dancing the night away, gothic Barbie style. What did you expect it would look like?
There’s a reason there is a red vynil floor in this movie: Muder on the Dancefloor, which I bet has unleashed hell at Infernos in more ways than one, needed to be referenced again. Why do you think that song is the end of Saltburn?
Even the tonal mismatch of this adaptation makes sense under this light.
The campy, Wes Anderson-inspired set pieces are probably a memory of a good night out without any morning-after regrets. They capture that natural high you feel when you’re in your 20s and you’ve just had the time of your life and wake up exhuberant and full of energy. Your head is not banging and your body isn’t aching despite you’ve slept 2 hours. They could also represent how you feel when you’re high on drugs, but let’s not always assume the only logical explanation and keep an open mind for a change.
The darker, Nosferatu-like scenes, are quite clearly the ghosts of the situationships past accrued in the pursuit of fun fueled by terrible judgment. The “I wish I could be anywhere but here” energy that Elordi and Robbie exude during their sex scenes feels so real because it’s what happens after you bring home someone you met at Infernos. The shame is yours to live with.
When I think that the marketing around this adaptation has revolved around Fennell’s experience of reading the novel and that great love story she imagined (hence the inverted commas) I feel like a fool.
The reality has always been there for me to see but carefully disguised as Fennell’s vision.
Margot Robbie has produced all of Fennell’s previous movies through Lucky Chap, the company she and her husband created back in 2014 with Josey McNamara and Sophia Kerr. The four of them got drunk after the London premiere of The Wolf of Wall Street and as a result decided to share a house in the Clapham. Their production company materialised within those four walls and was a vehicle for Robbie to design her own work and support other women-led projects.
As the savvy businesswoman she is, she is not only producing but starring in what she knows. And what she knows -and everyone in her production company- is a good night out in Clapham.
Of course Margot was going to cast herself and ask Jacob Elordi, a man who by virtue of his nationality is premium Clapham and Infernos fodder, in a film she and her husband are producing about the time when they met and where -under the license of the inverted commas- she can go wild and relive her best London years in plain sight without anyone being any wiser about it.
Let them write hot takes and buy tickets, she must have thought watching the opening weekend figures as she and her husband laughed out loud during the scene where Nelly visits Wuthering Heights to take Isabella back home.
“Can’t believe Jessie started barking at the bouncer when he wanted to kick her out. And you said ‘But this is Infernos, you can’t kick us out’” “Oh yeah, that was fun.” “Remember when Chris got so drunk he said he wanted to paint his room the colour of her girlfriend’s tits? You’re a savage to have included that!”
Ah ah ah.
What a time to be young and alive!
How Margot, her husband and their flatmates, turned production company partners, must have enjoyed planting Easter eggs while everyone else is loosing sleep over the use of inverted commas or all the ways the film strays from the source material, when it is dead obvious this adaptation is nothing but a homage to Robbie’s Infernos weekends, when the horrors of life consisted on being haunted by the memory of another sloppy Aussie kisser in the morning or the lyrics of Riptide before going to bed.
Abroad is an independent publication about London, living in between cultures, creativity, and being human in the age of artificial intelligence.
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I have been waiting for your commentary on this film before even contemplating watching it.
Now, I wonder how I lived in London for over 12 years and never went, nor heard of this famous Infernos nightclub. I probably spent too much time at G-A-Y Late (RIP)
Love this! Wasn’t expecting your WH review to take me back to my 90s London days, but there we are!