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Wuthering Heights
(2026)

Director – Emerald Fennell – 2026 – UK – Cert. 15 – 136m

***1/2

NSFW

Emily Brontë’s beloved fantasy romance gets a modern makeover with lashings of sex including some S&M – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 13th

The late eighteenth century. A man is publicly hanged in a town square, with crowds in attendance. Among the onlookers, in a scene unlike anything else that follows it in terms of its scale (a cast of hundreds of if not thousands) is young urchin Cathy Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington), relishing the spectacle alongside the other kids present.

Cathy lives with her father (Martin Clunes) and servants including young servant / companion Nelly (Vy Nguyen) in the family home Wuthering Heights on the Yorkshire Moors exposed to its treacherous weather of near constant rain, fog or snow. One night, father returns from the pub with a young boy he has rescued from being thrown out on the street by another customer. With the boy hiding in one of the upstairs bedrooms, Cathy goes to look for him only to be unexpectedly dragged under the bed in a moment invoking any number of horror movies. Under the bed, in the dark, she meets the boy (Owen Cooper).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Housemaid
(Hanyo,
하녀)
(2010)

Director – Im Sang-soo – 2010 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 110m

****

The husband of a well-heeled family has an affair with the new maid, arousing the ire of his loyal housekeeper and ruthless mother – screening on Saturday, October 22nd, 17.15 at Odeon Luxe West End 2 as part of a strand of films celebrating actor Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game) at London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) which runs in cinemas from Wednesday, October 19th to Sunday, October 30th; the film is also showing on BFI Player subscription

It’s inevitable that a South Korean film with this title invites comparisons with Kim Ki-young’s 1960 film of the same name, a watershed in Korean cinema. Whatever its virtues, Im Sang-Soo’s film can’t similarly be a watershed. If it’s based on that film as its end credits claim, it abandons the original’s central thesis. The housemaid here is not a social climber intent on seducing the husband. Rather, the family are part of the pampered super-rich elite, a small girl Nami (Ahn Seo-hyun, star of Okja, Bong Joon Ho, 2017) who takes having a maid for granted, a heavily pregnant wife Hae-ra (Woo Seo) who thinks the difficulties of having to raise children yourself are “for common people” and a husband Hoon Go (Lee Jung-jae from TV mini-series Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk, 2021) who, unable to get full sexual services from his pregnant wife, seeks his pleasures with the new maid Li Eun-yi (Jeon Do-youn) who appears, initially at least, somewhat uncomfortable with the idea, but then goes with the flow.… Read the rest