In my vision, Heathcliff lives in Avondale Heights and is a purveyor of fine meats at his local IGA. The ghost of Kath, his long-lost lover, comes banging on his sausage display case one day. “Look at moye, Cliffy, ya foxy moron!” she calls.
I read the other day that Netflix is doing an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Bold choice, given that approximately one bajillion already exist. We have faithful ones like the 1995 mini-series starring Colin Firth in a wet shirt, and philandering ones like 2001’s Bridget Jones’ Diary starring Colin Firth in a Christmas sweater. Unless the new one offers Colin Firth in a mankini, frankly I’m not interested.
As a person who loves the classics, there’s nothing like news of a modern adaptation to strike fear into my heart, rage into my liver and confusion into my kidneys. Lately I’ve been feeling systemically unwell as every director in the business announces their intention to dig some work of literary genius out of the grave, slap lipstick on its corpse and puppeteer it around town, Weekend at Bernie’s-style. Guillermo del Toro is doing Frankenstein, Christopher Nolan is doing The Odyssey. But the adaptation that has really caught my attention is Emerald Fennell’s reworking of one of my all-time favourite novels, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
Fennell has dropped a teaser that featured sexy eggs and a finger penetrating the mouth of a fish. I have no problem with the sex stuff – as long as all participants are consenting adults/fish, go off, queen. No, the thing that has me most worried is that it stars Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw, and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff.
I like both these actors. They’re blisteringly hot, and so magnetic onscreen that pairing them up together could feasibly disrupt the orbit of the moon. And yet I can say with the utmost conviction that they do not belong anywhere near Brontë’s gothic novel of savage yearning on the Yorkshire moors.
It may be unpatriotic to say this, but the problem with Margot and Jacob is that they are Australian. Not just any Australians, but Queenslanders. Look at them! They probably water-skied out of the womb wearing thongs and tiny baby sunglasses. These people are golden sun gods, born to eat prawns at the beach on Christmas Day – and now we’re asked to believe them as the most depressing and windswept lovers in literary history? Living a life of wretched misery in gloomy weather is British culture, not ours (even I know this, and I’m from Melbourne). I’m no purist, and it’s not that I think actors can never take on roles they don’t personally relate to – I loved Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa – but I just don’t think Heathcliff should know how to surf.
There was one acceptable route that Fennell could have taken when casting Aussies – and that was to commit to the bit. I’m talking Wuthering Heights: Kath and Cliff edition. In my vision, Heathcliff lives in Avondale Heights and is a purveyor of fine meats at his local IGA. The ghost of Kath, his long-lost lover, comes banging on his sausage display case one day. “Look at moye, Cliffy, ya foxy moron!” she calls. Suddenly, Kylie Minogue’s ‘The Loco-Motion’ starts playing over the loudspeaker, and the two of them Riverdance their way out of the shop and into the sunset. And scene.
I will be thoroughly investigating the art crimes committed by Fennell and her sexy fish, probably on opening weekend. As Brontë’s novel so violently demonstrates, the line between love and loathing is gossamer thin. And the only thing more fun than watching a brilliant adaptation of your favourite book is hate-watching a bad one.
By Eleanor Elliot Thomas
Published in Ed#747
Eleanor Elliot Thomas is the author of the forthcoming Do We Deserve This? (out 14 October) and The Opposite of Success.
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