If This Is Love, I'll Stay Single Spoilers

It's no secret that I'm single as a pringle with a tingle to mingle. So, Valentine's Day? Not my most important holiday. Since it landed on a weekend, I thought, "screw it, let's go to the movies." There's really only one movie that anyone's talking about this month and it's "Wuthering Heights". I thought, "Who knows? Maybe I'll learn something about modern love that will help me bag a baddie." After watching it, I'm ready to die alone.

Let's start with expectations. Emerald Fennell is a woman director. Immediately, I'm ready to support. I didn't watch Promising Young Women (name a woman), but I did watch Saltburn. It's so weird and sexual and fresh and different and willing to go there. It instantly made me a Fennell fan. Toss Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi into her next picture and I'm seated. Surely, Fennell is going to make the most irreverant novel adaptation ever. So why the hell is Wuthering so tame?

It's clear to me that the director is hung up on one theme: possession as love. From the get-go, Catherine and Heathcliff's relationship is thrown into the foray of master-servant dynamism. He starts the film as a nameless boy that Catherine's drunk-ass dad brings home as a "pet" for his daughter. Like a dog, she gives him a name. Comparing a lover to a dog happens a lot in this movie.

The love between Catherine and Heathcliff starts while they're children. I love the idea of meeting your soulmate in childhood and living happily ever after, and sometimes it does really happen. Watching Young Catherine and Young Heathcliff fall for each other was a highlight. Their delicate adventures lead to a penultimate moment where Heathcliff falls on his sword (nearly literally) for Catherine. This scene is all about Heathcliff protecting his master, which again draws the comparison between lover and dog.

Grown up, Heathcliff has transformed into Jacob Elordi. Works great for Catherine, whose stableboy, who loves her like a dog loves its owner, is the hottest man to ever exist on the Yorkshire Moors. Imagine if he looked like David Mitchell (that was cheap and I apologize, but the point is clear). It's revealled that Catherine can't be with Heathcliff because he's lowly. Heathcliff silently decides to leave. Going off to make your fortune in the name of love is top-tier romance. Some people's entire life philosophy is based on this concept. We all know that men are happy with a fold-out chair, 12 beers and NFL Red Zone. So why do they work so hard to get high-paying jobs? Daddy issues? Wrong. We do it for you, ladies. And that's Heathcliff. He goes off for five years, mysteriously makes a killing and returns with wealth so that Catherine will look at him favourably.

To return to the woman you love as a success is one of my favourite romantic daydreams. I'm not surprised that I loved Heathcliff's return. The setup with the egg was a master stroke, and his reveal through the fog was aesthetically perfect. It was hot. It was tense. It was the best scene of the movie — according to me, a guy who has played this exact scene in his head countless times only for it to never actually happen.

This brings up the next sticky-as-egg-yolk situation that lovers find themselves in: that of the moral dilemma. Is there a moral dilemma in Wuthering? Fennell makes Edgar Linton an absolute nothingburger. He's neither evil nor charming nor physically intimidating. He's just a rich guy whose sole purpose is to give Catherine another romantic option other than Heathcliff. Nobody in the sold-out theatre was shipping Linton and Catherine. He is a painfully plain placeholder whose only job is to wait for the six-foot-five sexpot to come ruin his marriage. Heathcliff has no moral qualms about getting in between husband and wife. In his eyes, he has always belonged to Catherine (again with the theme of possession). For the audience, it's a bit more complicated. Fennell makes it easy for us to root for Catherine and Heathcliff because we know that Catherine and Linton's marriage is a total sham. However, the fact remains that Catherine is Linton's wife, so she probably shouldn't cheat on him. But, like, Elordi hall pass right?

No surprise, Catherine and Heathcliff get away with it. This is the moment that I (and I think the whole audience) was waiting for. They are finally together, in love, with the danger of being discovered. This is our chance to explore their dynamic. Make it less master-dog and more person-person. Let them really connect. Show us what love is! But no, they just go to pound town. And not even hot pound town. Implied pound town, which, in this writer's humble opinion, is the worst kind of pound town. Listen, I'm not saying I wanted Wuthering to go softcore, but after Saltburn, after the promotional posters, after the slogan being "come undone," I thought I was in for some eroticism. And though, yes, it's implied that Heathcliff and Catherine are getting busy, the most graphic sex scene we get is between Catherine and Linton! Nobody paid to see that. I'm not saying that you have to have sex to be sexy, but having Heathcliff shove his fingers in Catherine's mouth is not enough. I need these two to come undone together, emotionally. I need to feel their passion. I need to see their relationship develop. Instead, they act like dogs in heat.

This movie pissed me off because it was such a wasted opportunity. During their affair, it's always the same. "I want you! I want you! I want you!" That's cool. Sex is great. You know it. I know it. But Fennell never takes the time to explore what happens after sex. Once the horniness is gone, where does that leave Catherine and Heathcliff? We get one scene at the end of their romance where Heathcliff busts and then they're, like, awkward together. Talk about realistic! Fennell used that for narrative purposes, to show that the climax of their relationship was over and that it was time for the downfall, but why did she avoid playing with the highs and lows of their relationship earlier? What about all the other times they have sex? They chose to show that in montage, rather than showing us what they do when they're not boning. Do they talk? Do they laugh? Do they make a plan for Catherine to leave Linton? Why didn't Fennell explore any of this? Instead, things fall apart and we get one of the worst film climaxes I've seen in a long time.

Should a woman retreat to her room and die of a broken heart in 2026? Talk about anti-feminist. Oh, the boy doesn't like me anymore so I'm going to die. Grow up. Also, Margot is over 30 in this. Not to age shame, but her actions don't match her image. She acts like a teenager because her character is one, but she looks like a beautiful adult woman who should know better and act more mature about such things. Don't just lock yourself away and wither away and fucking die. Drama queen for real. I know that her miscarriage is the real reason, but that's not really how it's framed in the film. I'm not saying she has to get over Heathcliff, but based on the superficiality of their relationship, based on how she thought of Heathcliff more as a dog than a man, based on Margot looking like a mature adult, I thought that she should have handled her situation with more grace.

The truth is, I wanted to like this movie. I wanted to like it so bad. Even after the credits rolled, I tried to gaslight myself into liking it. But the truth is that the movie as a whole was a terrible disappointment. It taught me nothing about love. It didn't even teach me anything about lust, except that a horse stable is a place to try. I wanted to be wowed. I wanted to be turned on. I wanted Fennell to make me her dog for two hours. Instead, I was just disappointed. For a pointedly liberal adaptation, Fennell could've gone so much further. She ignored key themes and replaced them with a surface-level romance. If this is what love looks like, I think I'll stay single.