Sexual desire can be a twisted thing, and Emerald Fennell isn't afraid to showcase the dark side of lust and longing. In fact, she relishes it with the kind of blood-smeared smile you might expect from the mind behind the darkly comic revenge-thriller Promising Young Woman. (Her feature-length directorial debut snagged her an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and a nom for Best Director — not too shabby.) With her sophomore outing, Saltburn, the English writer/director points her razor-sharp wit at the British upper class, the kind of vaguely aristocratic, disorderly decadent, and woefully snobby folks who boast appalling wealth and privilege along with an estate so big it has its own name: Saltburn.
In Fennell's much-anticipated follow-up to Promising Young Woman, she once more presents audiences with an anti-hero who uses sex and stereotypes as tools to achieve their darkest desires. While some critics have crudely denounced Saltburn as "The Talented Mr. Ripoff," this comparison to Anthony Minghella's 1999 movie adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel is as thin as that comparing Anna Kendricks's Woman of the Hour to Fennell's provocative previous feature. Perhaps the problem is that, in a cinema landscape overrun with superhero movies and other kid-friendly films, cinema for grown-ups is so rare that it shocks us into clumsy comparison.
While Saltburn does have some familiar framework to classic tales of obsession and deception, Fennell's love of bad fashion, banger songs, and the messy area where attraction meets repulsion offers audiences a thrill ride that is uniquely harrowing, hilarious, and exhilarating. Plus, Saltburn is a thriller that edges confidently into self-aware queer comedy.
What's Saltburn about?
The Banshees of Inisherin Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan stars as Oliver Quick, a "scholarship case" attending Oxford University in 2006 alongside fleets of the UK's upper-crustiest youth. While relentless hard work got him there, their spots were secured by legacy, family names, and heaps of donations. While he looks achingly dweeby in glasses and a blazer, they look effortlessly cool in Juicy Couture sweatpants and eyebrow rings.
Gen Z can bring back '00s fashion without irony, but Fennell reminds us how impossibly uncool even the hippest of fits from this era was. Visual jokes range from the reveal of achingly regrettable fashion choices to Oliver facing a comically large manor door, unsure of how to even address such an antiquated symbol of affluence and gatekeeping. But even as the cool kids might make us laugh in retrospect, Oliver pines to be with them. Or more specifically, he deeply desires to be with their king, the hot but dopey Felix Catton (Euphoria's Jacob Elordi). Class conflicts aside, "Ollie" and Felix become fast friends, and as summer approaches, the latter invites his poor friend to join him at the family's ludicrous estate.
The film's gothic framework involves a grown and glowering Oliver looking back on this summer, warning his audience that people misunderstood his feelings for Felix. Throughout the film, this ominous voiceover will arise, giving some added color — or shadow — while reminding us that all of this is coming from the unreliable narration of a character as enigmatic as he is mesmerizing. Oliver becomes a figurative shapeshifter at the Catton home, bending his persona to best appease whoever is his audience: the project, the crush, the student, the co-conspirator. But to what end?
Saltburn's supporting cast – from Rosamund Pike to Carey Mulligan — is stupendous.
While the first act on the Oxford campus is ripe with cringe comedy of the social embarrassment variety, the second act at Saltburn itself is absolutely on fire with its scorching satire of the so-called elite. Rosamund Pike, who deserved an Oscar for Gone Girl, gives her funniest performance yet as mother Elspeth, who chatters away with her concern about others — in between some of the most cutting barbs ever committed to film. (Her withering delivery of "She'll do anything for attention" may be the best punchline of the year.) With a wide smile and breezy tone, Pike welcomes audiences into Saltburn, then swiftly stings with a series of increasingly outrageous confessions, to which Oliver — and us — are eager audience. She is electrifying in her blithe cruelty, delivering the kind of lines that drag queens would call "reads" but with the British brightness that makes their sharp edge all the more jolting.
Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman's Oscar-nominated leading lady, reunites with Fennell to play a quirky friend of the Catton family. And while her appearance is brief, it is rife with comically flighty comments and ruthlessly funny reaction shots. Academy Award nominee Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) adds further panache as the family's oblivious but occasionally spunky patriarch. Alison Oliver (Conversations with Friends) sizzles as Felix's trouble-making little sister, while Elordi slyly plays Felix as nothing too special beyond being hot, young, and rich. It's not that he plays the role half-heartedly; rather, his shrug of a portrayal is a damnation of such poor little rich boys who cruise not so much on charm but on privilege.
Archie Madekwe, as one of the Catton cousins always rankled over rankings, is exciting in his bullying of Oliver, thinking himself a cat in the game when he's just another jewel-encrusted mouse. And shout-out to Lolly Adefope, the English comedian who has awed in Ghosts and Miracle Workers; she has a small but biting role as a lady who is over all this posh nonsense — especially her fool of a wealthy husband.
Barry Keoghan is a revelation in Saltburn.
The Irish actor has garnered wild praise from critics since his haunting performance in Yorgos Lanthimos's cerebral 2017 thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer. From there, he's been lauded in challenging films like Christopher Nolan's war drama Dunkirk, Bart Layton's true crime docu-drama American Animals, and David Lowery's surreal fantasy The Green Knight. His cheeky performance in Chloé Zhao's MCU entry Eternals spurred countless crushes online, while his heartbreaking turn in The Banshees of Inisherin made the Academy take notice. And now, with the world watching, Keoghan commits full-bodied to a role that dares you to look away.
While Oliver is Saltburn's narrator and protagonist, he is nonetheless a slippery figure. Keoghan's penetrating gaze focuses on Felix, and it's hard to gauge if what Oliver is feeling is love, lust, jealousy, hatred, or a heady mix of all this and more. The role of Oliver is made up of masks, and Keoghan wears each one so convincingly that it's an enthralling game to guess which is real. Does he mean his chipper assessment of the house's priceless artworks? The growling huff of pillow talk during a late-night tryst? The sweet invitation to friendship? The hushed rush of gossip over cocktails?
Oliver talks a good game no matter who he's talking to, but Keoghan and Fennell know the truth of him lies in his actions. Sex is not some lofty allusion in Saltburn. Love scenes — or lust scenes, anyway — play out with a visceral relish. Fennell refuses glossy displays of perfect flesh, instead reveling in sweat, spit, semen, and menstrual blood, sticky and viscous. Some in the audience at my screening gasped in surprise or cried out in dismay over these graphic depictions of sex, which range from kinky to taboo to groundbreakingly shocking. Yet Fennell's film doesn't project judgment onto any of the above, as it is tied deeply to Oliver's POV, and he is definitely unashamed. Keoghan expresses that in the confidence of his physicality in these sex scenes and beyond, to a climax that is kinetic, deliciously devilish, and over-the-top. (Dare I predict John Waters will love it?)
In the end, Saltburn is unabashedly a movie for grown-ups, and thank god.
Fennell unleashes a torrid eat-the-rich satire that confronts the 99%'s conflicted feelings over the 1%. In Oliver, we are given the vicarious thrill of being ushered into these precious, pompous spaces, taken on a tour of obscene consumerism that dates back centuries, and led into the labyrinth of jealousy, awe, and wrath. We are made complicit by following Oliver through his elaborate and merciless scheme, and we are invited to join him in a victory lap that is as jarring as it is jubilant.
Simply put, Saltburn is dynamite, bursting with lust, lies, and laughs — the kind edged with a dark snarl. If loving a movie this willfully seedy, boldly savage, smoking hot, and unnervingly sensational is wrong, then being right is boring.
Saltburn is now on Prime Video.
UPDATE: Jan. 4, 2024, 11:46 a.m. EST Saltburn was reviewed out of Fantastic Fest. The review has been republished for the film's debut on Prime Video
