You ask me the most romantic film of all time is Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder). Its design is two people from completely different backgrounds who similarly exist in quiet lives where they go unrecognized unappreciated undervalued until the moment they meet then mutually find and reciprocate simple modest kindness that blossoms into genuine affection until it inevitably withers. The romance genre as tearjerker. Fassbinder as tender brutalist.
What Wuthering Heights (2026, Emeral Fennell) does is express love as the painful sick toxic self-degrading miserable excruciatingly brief yet eternally damaging inborn prank nature has bestowed on us. And it has fun doing so. Romance as bleak tragedy as dark as it gets.
The prologue sells us the spectacle of death and sex we cheer for. The introduction of Catherine’s home Wuthering Heights full of yonic images that clit arch the winding river originating from where life begins. Poor illiterate people fuck better. And the sentimental child promise I won’t go away I will never leave you no matter what you do is the sweetest bliss swooning heart butterflies people stupid enough to exchange as part of nuptial vows for thousands of years can’t help but fall for.
When Heathcliff breaks that chair we know that he’s the only one good enough for Cathy. But in real life you end up hurting the one you love. And so Wuthering Heights translates into cinema a projection of a couple who have found the greatest love of all time so they treat each other abysmally spitefully relentlessly their imaginations energy and souls dedicated to the vindictive harm torture dirty talk and every variety of abuse they are able to inflict upon one another. Everything I always knew was the full expression of love. Thrushcross Grange is Academy Award for Best Production Design with that sitting room with the lacquer red floor and white marble hands mantlepiece.
ISABELLA LINTON is what makes Wuthering Heights probably the finest Hollywood studio trash targeted at a large audience of the twenty-first century. Alison Oliver is bubbly adorable vulnerable wanton the only character whose pain I truly feel whose arousal I truly blush. She’s the golden honeypot at the end of the tragedy degradation arc. Romance = passion. Wuthering Heights is the lavish big budget journey from the sentimental passion of first love into pornographic all consuming overwhelming lust. Passion of the heart passion of the flesh what two desires could be least worthy of our trust. Second in overall impact only to Buñuel’s adaptation of the same source Abismos de pasión (1954). And I do respect the scene where Cathy looks in the mirror and slaps herself callback to Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.
When Heathcliff breaks that chair we know that he’s the only one good enough for Cathy. But in real life you end up hurting the one you love. And so Wuthering Heights translates into cinema a projection of a couple who have found the greatest love of all time so they treat each other abysmally spitefully relentlessly their imaginations energy and souls dedicated to the vindictive harm torture dirty talk and every variety of abuse they are able to inflict upon one another. Everything I always knew was the full expression of love. Thrushcross Grange is Academy Award for Best Production Design with that sitting room with the lacquer red floor and white marble hands mantlepiece.
ISABELLA LINTON is what makes Wuthering Heights probably the finest Hollywood studio trash targeted at a large audience of the twenty-first century. Alison Oliver is bubbly adorable vulnerable wanton the only character whose pain I truly feel whose arousal I truly blush. She’s the golden honeypot at the end of the tragedy degradation arc. Romance = passion. Wuthering Heights is the lavish big budget journey from the sentimental passion of first love into pornographic all consuming overwhelming lust. Passion of the heart passion of the flesh what two desires could be least worthy of our trust. Second in overall impact only to Buñuel’s adaptation of the same source Abismos de pasión (1954). And I do respect the scene where Cathy looks in the mirror and slaps herself callback to Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.
2/14/2026 AMC Phipps 14
Atlanta, GA
