The film begins with a black screen and an aural Rorschach blot: are we hearing a man masturbate on a worn-out mattress? No, actually; he’s being hanged, and what we hear are his agonized groans and the steady creak of the gallows. His identity is of no consequence; among those who have gathered for his execution is a spirited young girl, Catherine Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington), who lives with her father, Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes), at a craggy estate called Wuthering Heights. Catherine has pale blond hair, a love for the color red, and a habit of sprinting across the moors with wild abandon. She will soon be joined on these windy cardio workouts by a scruffy urchin named Heathcliff (Owen Cooper), whom her father brings home one day. Brontë purists will click their tongues at Fennell’s liberties: Catherine’s older brother, Hindley, is nowhere to be found, and her father, who dies early in the novel, lives to a miserable old age. The roles of father and son have effectively been merged; it is Mr. Earnshaw who will torment the young Heathcliff—and live to see the older Heathcliff bring about his undoing.