Actors should be allowed to play whomever or whatever. In a perfect world none of us would or should have a problem with a straight actor playing gay or vice versa, or a non-Latino playing Fidel Castro or you-name-it.
Acting is about submitting and becoming, and whenever a particular effort succeeds it’s glorious. I can still enjoy Alec Guinness‘s Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia, his actual ethnicity be damned. I’ve always believed in his storied brilliance. All Guinness has to do is speak a line or two…sold.
Then why, I was asking myself, did I have trouble submitting to Emma Corrin‘s lead performance in Lady Chatterly’s Lover (Netflix), which I saw Monday night (9.5) in Telluride?
Corrin was a perfect Lady Diana in The Crown, and yet I had difficulty accepting her as a wealthy cis British woman succumbing to runting passion in the 1920s blah blah. Nor did I believe that her earthy gamekeeper lover (Jack O’Connell) had any special passion for her. I felt only the effort.
This is probably at least partly because Corrin has been somewhat pronounced about being queer (she came out in July 2021) and adopting “they/them” pronouns and being nonbinary and wearing breast flatteners and whatnot.
Plus there’s just something about her that seems coy and stand-offish about sensuality in any form.
I said a somewhat similar thing about the late Olivia De Havilland when she passed in late July 2020. To me OdH always seemed to lack a sensual ignition switch. Too goody two-shoes or something. I was immediately disciplined for saying so. Variety‘s Steven Gaydos accused me of “pissing on her coffin.” I replied that detecting an absence of a sensual undercurrent in De Havilland was not dismissive or derogatory.
I’ll never not appreciate Corrin’s first-rate skills, but I just couldn’t believe that her Lady Chatterly was hungry for the proverbial thrusting loins. I kept telling myself “forget Corrin’s stated real-life identities” — just sink into her soul and absorb the feelings and let the movie wash over you and carry you along. But I couldn’t.
And I’m saying this as someone who truly loved Jonathan Groff‘s straight FBI guy in Mindhunter, Cate Blanchett‘s vampy lipstick lesbian in Carol, Kevin Spacey‘s miserable married suburbanite in American Beauty, Peter Finch‘s gay doctor in Sunday Bloody Sunday and so on. Great acting is great acting, but…well, I’ve said it.