Reviews #2
Featuring Wuthering Heights and a London Framer and a cover image that fits!
The week of 2nd - 8th March 2026. One week into launching my Reviews and I have realised that they will need to feature activities that are spread across the week, rather than all packed into one weird day. We learn on the job. This is because London is full of amazing happenings and Things To Do (if you have a credit card) and I am only a mortal.
Contents
Wuthering Heights by Emerald Fennel
The Marylebone Vintage Furniture and Flea Market
Vijay’s Reflections
Uniqlo White T-shirts
Wuthering Heights (2026)
Category: film. Rating: 7/10. Attended: Friday night. Attire: civvies. Cost: £17. Vibe: girl groups, popcorn with m&ms, sirens outside. My mood: intrigued, flustered, weepy.
From the moment I watched Saltburn, which seemed uncomfortably a bit like a documentary of my familial and home situation - I knew I loved Emerald Fennel. I know hardly anything about her, only: she has an amazing name, she comes from privilege, she is probably a bit of a sicko, her lack of concern about cultural politics is baffling, she does not have dark hair and green eyes as one imagines she should. When I heard that she was making Wuthering Heights the film I was beside myself. I had read it when I was about fifteen and trying to show everyone how clever I was. These are the only things I remember from the book: Heathcliff is so sexy. The landscape is like a third protagonist. What are moors and dales? Kathy is depressed and yearning. One of them haunts the other in the shroud of long, black nights. My young self, used to romantic dalliances in which I was the Princess and he was the Pea - was left with the impression that this was my favourite of the Bronte books. But, as I said, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you the storyline. Now, having watched Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi bring a straight RuPaul’s Drag Race, Lady Gaga, leathermen version of Wuthering Heights to the screen, I can tell you what it is about: SEX.
Would people be ripping this film apart so viciously if it were written by a man? This is not just a flimsy cop-out brash white feminist comment to spray across a crowd of faces to get them to be quiet. It is more than that. It is the fact that this film feels inherently feminine. Feminine not to mean dainty and pretty and light and gentle and soft and pale and hesitant and demure and compassionate. Feminine to mean sexy and wild and angry and grotesque and heartbroken and pained and icy and ruined and flammable. Was it an accurate remake of the book? Obviously not. Was it well cast? No. Was it a ‘good film’ in the sense that The Godfather is a good film? God no. But did it have me crossing my legs as tight as I could and did it have me weeping gasping for breath and did it have me smiling at the confirmation that there was another lunatic in the world and is it very beautiful? Yes. I could try to say that this is a feminine thing but Wes Anderson is there to oppose me; that Wuthering Heights features many shots and scenes that are purely there for beauty’s sake. Beauty or shock or wonder or horror or lust or any of the other mind-bowing aspects of being alive. There are shots that are often simply very nice to look at, and at times genius. If the reason we watch films is to disappear then this one does its job. It disappears us into hours of foreplay and sexual tension and sprinkles in images that tickle the brain in the way that art sometimes should. Art for beauty’s sake is not very ‘cool’ but in a world so ugly, it can often offer some crushed-eggs-on-silk-sheets reprieve.
The Marylebone Vintage Furniture and Flea Market
Category: shopping. Rating: 5/10. Attended: Saturday morning. Attire: a bonnet, a top that said ‘Broke’ and a Burberry trench. Cost: £5. Vibe: yuppies with tiny dogs and coffees. My mood: competitive, excited, amused.
We’re getting rid of our IKEA furniture because it is soulless and horrible and replacing it with ‘pieces’ that are way older than us, and way more well-designed. As such, we have become that sexy couple in ankle length coats and caps who waft around a school hall on a Sunday muttering about the mid-century desks and mushroom lamps arranged for our choosing. It is no wonder that I am broke. We have found a few things so far which have ignited a ferrel need to find more. In the small and pretty village of Yoxford, we happened upon a painted french dresser and both gasped, “for the kitchen!” (we are elderly). The pale blue paint was peeled and distressed to allow peeks at the green paint underneath. We began chomping at the bit and frothing at the mouth. “Please can we use your measuring tape?” we panted to the geriatrics at the front desk and sprinted across the warehouse almost knocking over a spine to reach the French dresser that had now sparked the interest of another nondescript white couple. We snarled at them, then into the emergency savings, and bought the dresser. We were in deep. I began researching vintage furniture sales and booked one in Marylebone because “there’ll be underpriced furniture from the posh people who live there” and the church it was held at had the same name as one of my High Schools.
There was overpriced furniture instead. I found a ridiculous lamp that I loved, a round lightbulb inside a clamshell, and tried in my petrified way to lower the price which was around the same as my monthly bills. The seller told me it was from Belgium and I lost my nerve. I didn’t buy the lamp and now I will regret it for the rest of my life. Maybe it is best not to go to these things. This particular sale made us feel: poor, cliche, tired and we lamented the kindnesses of the English countryside in comparison to London and its iffy, bitchy ways. And then! The next day we went to a vintage furniture and clothes flea market at Goldsmiths where I would have done my Masters if I weren’t such a stupid snob. There were families, there were locals, young people and elderlies! The people selling things didn’t have one nose in the air and both eyes on the neighbouring stall keeper. There were still hot yuppies in tiny beanies and puffy eyes from arguing with their thin, perfect influencer girlfriends all night but there was also the vibe that pre-loved stuff is meant to bring. My dad is a slut for second-hand shopping and so a lot of our happy memories together includes us hunting for antiques, pre-loved furs, anything that ignites dopamine. He has brilliant taste and can spot a beautiful, valuable thing while I am still learning (the clam lamp). But the vibe of a vintage sale should be: humorous, light-hearted, exciting, and all about the things on display not about the other people there. I took off my jersey so that everyone could read my ‘Broke’ T-shirt and left.
Vijay’s Reflections Framers
