Netflix movie Rebecca makes significant mistakes in adapting Daphne du Maurier's Gothic novel, and the perfect example of the film's shortcomings is Maxim de Winter's yellow linen suit. Rebecca tells the story of Maxim's young second wife, who moves into his estate and slowly realizes that her new husband and his household are haunted by the memory of his first wife, Rebecca.
Unfortunately for Netflix, Rebecca was already adapted by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, and his version is largely regarded as a masterpiece. Unlike Hitchcock's version, Rebecca 2020 strips the story of its substance in exchange for a cold but beautifully designed film that has nothing meaningful to say - and its obvious, blatant symbolism makes it clear that Netflix doesn't trust its audience to understand the film. The critical failure of Rebecca 2020 is perfectly distilled in one memorable costume: the yellow linen suit worn by Maxim de Winter in the first third of the film.
Costume designer Julian Day gave Maxim a memorable look by dressing him in head-to-toe gold, clearly making the point that Maxim isn't just a trophy husband: he is literally dressed as a golden trophy. Much like the rest of Rebecca, the obvious symbolism of the suit is a striking visual that is also completely meaningless. Rebecca already made it clear to the audience that Maxim is a trophy husband without the suit - that's the entire point of his character. It's apparent that the costume only exists to make a visual statement and attempt to say something about Maxim's character. Unfortunately, everything the suit is clumsily trying to communicate has already been made exceedingly obvious by the premise of the movie.
A major problem with Rebecca 2020 and specifically with Maxim's suit is that the film suffers from being overly designed at the expense of telling a good story. Every shot in Rebecca feels like it was chosen to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible when the same level of care isn't given to the content of the scenes - which mostly feel flat and underwritten. Maxim's yellow suit isn't good, but it's designed to be striking against the romantic backdrop of their honeymoon and nothing more. The suit hammers home a point that was already made - Maxim is a prize for his second wife - and comes across as a failed attempt to add depth to the character.
The bigger problem with Rebecca and the yellow suit is that the Netflix adaptation doesn't trust its audience. Maxim's obvious costume implies that it's not enough for the film to show off his obvious wealth and his estate: it has to go out of its way to hammer home Maxim and his wife's uneven power dynamic instead of trusting the audience to surmise that on their own. Dressing Maxim in the yellow suit to emphasize that he is, as designer Julian Day put it to Fashionista, "a great golden trophy," further emphasizes Rebecca's unwillingness to leave anything unsaid or up for interpretation, when the movie can blatantly lay everything out instead.
The bad reviews and many problems with Rebecca ultimately come from the fact that the film is repeatedly prioritizing story over substance and refusing to leave any nuance in the story. Rebecca doesn't trust its audience, so everything in the film is as obvious as possible so that nothing can possibly be missed. The film is so overly-designed that every scene looks like a beautifully composed fashion plate, in a hollow attempt to disguise the fact that none of those scenes have anything worthwhile to say. Maxim's yellow suit is a bad costume moment in a worse movie, and it's the perfect distillation of the mistakes that made Netflix's adaptation of Rebecca such a failure.