Hear Me Out: It’s time for Emerald Fennell to go away for a while
Emerald Fennell is, unfortunately, one of the most talked about directors in the movie business right now, with leaked images from her Wuthering Heights adaptation dominating social media. One peak online, and you’ll notice that many people are expressing outrage over the historical inaccuracy of Margot Robbie’s costume and bizarre casting choices, such as Jacob Elordi as the titular Heathcliff. After the release of Promising Young Woman, Fennell made quite the splash with her so-called feminist revenge story about a woman avenging her best friend’s rapist, eventually evolving into a strange story about how the said woman plans her own murder in order to enact the perfect revenge.
However, despite the highly questionable ideas within the film, some audiences went crazy for the well-constructed visuals and impressive production design, highlighting the look of the film and glossing over the dodgy political ideas. But alas, perhaps people suspected that Fennell would brush up on her writing skills in time for her next venture, which was announced as part of the official selection at the London Film Festival in 2023 and continued to be talked about for many months after its cinematic release during November that year.
However, while Promising Young Woman had its issues, there was perhaps nothing more cinematically offensive than Saltburn, which remains a slight on all artists and the filmmaking process itself. It finds the director having created another so-called satire about the wealthy elite, this time of Britain. However, she cannot muster a valid or cohesive criticism, given that she is part of the social group she is ‘satirising’. Fennell herself grew up on a similarly ostentatious estate and comes from immense privilege due to her father being a well-known jewellery designer, widely known in his business as the ‘King of Bling’.
As a result, Fennell’s satire of elitism and class inequality winds up being completely empty after the reveal that Barry Keoghan’s character is actually upper middle class and was simply obsessed/in love with Felix, going to extreme lengths to become part of his social circles and win his attention. Ultimately, Fennell’s message implies the idea that we should pity the rich because middle-class people always leech off of their wealth. It makes bafflingly little sense but somehow adds up, given that Fennell has no fathomable grasp of the real world and the real people who live outside of her very sheltered bubble.
Fennell’s work as a director undoubtedly thrives in the visuals, opting for aesthetics over substance. These images, while pretty, contain no point or substance behind them; instead, they create on-the-nose metaphors that exist purely to be screen-grabbed and shared on Tumblr. While this could point towards a promising future if she directed scripts by people who know how to write or brushed up on her own writing skills, Fennell has proved yet again that she will not be doing this and will continue down the egotistic trip that somehow she can do it all, and well.
Despite her staggering incompetence as a writer and repeated criticism that her stories are, by far, the weakest aspect of her work. Not only this, but the attempt to add meaning by hiding behind topical subjects related to current socio-political issues is a blatant stab at being an ‘intellectual filmmaker’ and adding empty weight to hollow ideas.
With all of Fennell’s effort to prove herself a worthy writer and director, she is hindering her own work and damaging her reputation, with each venture a blatant attempt at shock filmmaking to divide audiences and lure people into the cinema under the guise that it is the next project from ‘the twisted mind’ of Emerald Fennell. Ultimately, there is only so far her mind goes, and it seems that her Wuthering Heights adaptation will be another piece of needlessly shocking cinema that destroys a classic novel in its exploitation of another current issue, further cementing her as a director who either needs to take a nap, or simply find a new writer.
