From her roles in “The Crown” and “Barbie,” Emerald Fennell has been moving into the directorial world of filmmaking. “Promising Young Woman” had spitting-in-Bo-Burnham’s-coffee Carey Mulligan. “Saltburn” featured tall, tan, popsicle-sucking Jacob Elordi, and after social media’s immediate love for the Australian actor, it comes with little shock that Fennell has decided to recast him in her new movie.
An adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” Elordi is set to star as Heathcliff alongside Margot Robbie, Hollywood’s “Barbie” powerhouse, as Catherine Earnshaw. Fennell’s first two features established her as a director to keep an eye on in the industry; and with her recent announcement, she certainly has reaffirmed this fact.
“Wuthering Heights” is one of the more famous books from the Brontë sisters, featuring a love story between Catherine, the wild-spirited daughter of the Earnshaw family, and Heathcliff, who is taken in by the family as a child. The book is full of discussions on class and race, as well as betrayal, death, and heartbreak. While it might be an exciting novel to read, it’s nothing like what we’ve seen from Fennell so far.
Whether Fennell is good or bad at making movies is a completely different conversation. The visuals knock it out of the park, but often the message of the movie, when presented through the dialogue, is more of a miss. It seems her writing is on the weaker side of her abilities.
But honestly … has Fennell even read the book? Unlike her previous films, it doesn’t feature any bathtub-slurping, hot nerds in glasses like Barry Keoghan. There aren’t any sexy nurse costumes for revenge-seeking baristas to wear. “Wuthering Heights” has its charm, but with Fennell’s reputation for neon and cheetah print, along with her inability to write convincing dialogue for the poorly developed characters, I have very little faith. Listen, I know she won a screenplay Oscar for “Promising Young Woman,” but I doubt she’s up for something as renowned as a Brontë novel.
And let’s talk about the casting. If you’re someone like Fennell, who may or may not have actually read the book, Elordi is the obvious answer for this role. After “Saltburn,” when him … doing stuff in a bathtub was well received by viewers, it makes sense for Fennell to think of him for her next project.
However, Elordi, an Australian man of European descent, isn’t exactly the spitting image of Brontë’s description of Heathcliff. While Brontë kept his race ambiguous, most people regard Heathcliff as a person of color. Throughout the novel, his brooding personality is emphasized by his appearance, described as having dark skin, eyes, and hair that supposedly contrast his “gentlemanly stature.” He is often nicknamed as a castaway or a lascar (defined as a sailor from the Southeast Asian region).
Along with these examples, the period in which Brontë sets this story is during the Liverpool Slave Trade; Liverpool was one of the leading slave ports of Britain in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Heathcliff notably meets Mr. Earnshaw in Liverpool, which further leads many to gather he is of non-white descent. He’s been theorized to be Indian, African, Asian, or of mixed race.
Robbie is beloved by many film fanatics after her extensive career as an actress, but if she is right for this role is also up for debate. Catherine is supposed to be dead before she turns 20. It’s not that women past their thirties don’t have their place in acting, but seeing that Robbie and Elordi are some of Hollywood’s biggest stars right now, it kind of feels like Fennell put Google’s most popular acting names in a hat and cast her movie by drawing out of it. Timothee Chalamet and Florence Pugh, better luck next time. Maybe you’ll get “Jane Eyre.”
The negative reaction to Fennell’s adaptation isn’t surprising to me. White-washing in movies is a common occurrence—take Elizabeth Taylor in “Cleopatra,” Ben Affleck in “Argo,” or Scarlett Johansson in “Ghost in the Shell.” Shouldn’t someone who has presented themselves as a cutting-edge filmmaker, like Fennell, at least cast their movie true to the story it’s based on? And truthfully, I don’t know if Fennell needs any more white people to play her leads. Among her two movies, exactly two people of color are in the main casts—both of which are relatively unimportant best friends of the main characters. Fennell has created her movies based on new, exciting, exotic eroticism, but loves to keep the same white celebrities in the middle of her stories.
“Wuthering Heights” movies have been historically ill-received; Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation has a 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, bringing in $1.7 million from a $5 million budget, along with the director herself expressing her own distaste for how the film turned out. Peter Kominsky’s 1992 version of the story has an even worse rating, currently sitting at 31%. Along with other poorly received versions—that I hadn’t even heard of before this week—it’s obvious that this movie is tricky to get right.
With the movie not set to start filming until 2025, Fennell could still take it somewhere unexpected; we don’t know the whole story behind her casting decisions. It’s not that Elordi and Robbie aren’t talented, it’s just that this announcement is giving off more “money-grabbing” vibes than an actual passion for filmmaking and honoring one of literature’s most famous stories. For now, all we have to look forward to is the Jacob Elordi TikTok edits.
