We’ve all fully understood for months that Emerald Fennell‘s Wuthering Heights (Warner Bros., 2.11) is going to deliver a fair amount of hungry, gasping, shuddering sexuality…fuck me hard and long, Heathcliff….slam my ham with overwhelming vigor, etc.
My first reaction to the trailer’s first closeup of 35-year-old Margot Robbie is that she’s too old to play Catherine Earnshaw, whom Bronte envisioned as a young lass in her early 20s. Plus she’s seven years older than 28 year-old Jacob Elordi, who plays Heathcliff.
Then again Robbie isn’t the first too-old Cathy — Merle Oberon played her in William Wyler‘s 1939 version when she was 38. Wyler’s Heathcliff, Laurence Olivier, was six years younger.
Plus Emily Bronte’s “Nelly Dean” is being portrayed this time by Vietnamese actress Hong Chau…a Vietnamese woman stirring the plot soup in the West Yorkshire moors in early 19th Century England?…I don’t think so! More bullshit presentism + nonsensical diverse casting for its own sake.