In Defense of 'Saltburn' and 'Wuthering Heights' Director Emerald Fennell’s Highly Divisive Filmmaking

The Makings of an Emerald Fennell Movie

Despite the fact that she has only made three films, we already know a few common threads to an Emerald Fennell movie. First, her films have a tantalizing quality about them. In all of her works, Fennell plays with seduction and subversion. In Promising Young Woman, Carey Mulligan plays Cassandra, a woman who feigns inebriation so men will take her home before she drops the act and calls them out on their unwanted advances. In Saltburn, Barry Keoghan plays Oliver, a seemingly innocent college student from a working-class background who lusts after Jacob Elordi’s Felix at the latter’s posh estate. Based on the trailers for Wuthering Heights, Fennell’s take appears to be a highly eroticized reframing of the gothic romance. 

Next, there is a blend of the classical and the contemporary in Fennell’s work. Although her critics enjoy pretending that there is nothing nuanced about her storytelling, Fennell often incorporates literary classics into her work in both subtly and aggressively pointed ways. In Promising Young Woman, Cassandra is named after the Greek mythological figure who was doomed never to be believed despite her repeated attempts to speak truth to power. Saltburn invokes famous novels about class tensions set in the world of the upper echelon like Brideshead Revisited and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Wuthering Heights will be Fennell’s first direct reworking of a literary classic, though she has already acknowledged that her version will be a loose adaptation. She has even gone so far as to put quotation marks around the title in promotional materials, as if to indicate to the audience that they should not expect faithfulness to the original source material.

Another crucial element of Emerald Fennell’s work is her predilection for shocking moments that are destined to be discussed. The bathtub and graveyard scenes in Saltburn were arguably  talked about more than the rest of the movie. In a viral interview on the red carpet of the Wuthering Heights premiere, Fennell alluded to the fact that “something happens on a rock.” Fennell seems hyper aware that this has become a part of what audiences can expect from her films. For better or worse, this quality of her artistry has made her stand out, even if it’s not for great reasons.

Why People Love to Pile on Emerald Fennell’s Films

Fennell’s critics take a perverse pleasure in tearing her work apart. Only part of that is because of the divisive nature of the actual work. For instance, without spoiling the ending, there are valid criticisms that the final moment of Promising Young Woman was a “cop out” of sorts, an attempt at Fennell having both an effectively subversive ending and a more traditionally pleasing one. Many folks had similar thoughts about the final act of Saltburn, which Tina Fey satirized in an oft-repurposed viral clip from her appearance on the “Las Culturistas” podcast.

However, the critics have seemed to give themselves permission to pile on Emerald Fennell for reasons that go beyond her work. The daughter of a renowned jewelry designer, Fennell was born into an upper class family, which became an inevitable part of the Saltburn discourse. Many cinephiles felt that Fennell failed to pull off her version of an “eat the rich” story, since she herself was blinded by her own privilege. This assessment is understandably frustrating to some, but there is a hypocrisy to saying Fennell is unable to transcend her upbringing in her work when other filmmakers like Sofia Coppola, daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, receive near unanimous praise for carving out her own space in the industry.

On the other hand, critiques around the casting of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights have more merit. In the original novel, Heathcliff is described as “dark-skinned.” For her version, Fennell cast Jacob Elordi, who she claims resembled the illustration of the character in the edition she read as a child. That choice was understandably not well-received online. Of course, by this point, the damage had already been done, and it has been haunting the film up to the point of its release. 

However, while Fennell is ultimately at fault here for making this casting decision, it’s interesting to note that Elordi has managed to avoid being held accountable for accepting the role. Meanwhile, actress Odessa A’zion was recently ridiculed online for accepting a role initially written for an actor of Mexican heritage. She later dropped out of the project, but guess who was barely criticized? The male director behind the project. Folks, we cannot pick and choose who has to be held accountable for these kinds of mistakes!

There will surely be plenty to say about Fennell’s version of Wuthering Heights when it is finally released to the public. I won’t be surprised if there is more discourse, both justified and unjustified. However, I also won’t be surprised if the film overperforms at the box office and down the line on digital and streaming. Though she is a divisive filmmaker, Fennell reliably generates buzz each time she makes a film. The vast majority of the time, the most controversial moments in her films, though shocking to witness at first, are ultimately harmless. In a time when more and more film lovers complain that nobody watches movies anymore, it has to be noted that people actually do watch Emerald Fennell’s movies, and that should be at least partially admired.

_{via @BuzzingPop}