Saltburn (2023)

Emerald Fennell follows up her Oscar winning Promising Young Women (2020) with this black psychological dramedy that throws everything at the wall and makes a lot of it stick. Barry Keoghan takes the lead as Oliver Quick, an Oxford scholarship student who befriends Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) during his first year as a student and is eventually invited to Felix's family home, Satlburn, for the summer holidays. It's actually nearly an hour into the film by the time we get to Saltburn, and the opening portion is spent with with the upper class elite; individuals who Oliver initially looks down upon with distaste, an emotion that is undoubtedly reciprocated as he's shunned for his paltry roots in comparison. That is until he meets Felix, a popular student who Oliver has only glimpsed from afar in pubs or libraries and is seemingly out of Oliver's league both socially and sexually; the film opens with Oliver (speaking post events of the film) attempting to answer the question as to whether he was in love with Felix or not. The first section of the film is engrossing as Felix and Oliver become unlikely friends at Oxford, and although Oliver becomes part of Felix's group of friends he still sticks out on the peripheral and it's seemingly his affection (that grows into obsession) for Felix that keeps him hanging on to this particular rich batch of students. After events conspire to leave Oliver wondering what he's going to do during the summer, Felix invites him to spend the holidays with his family in their sprawling estate, and Saltburn becomes a character in itself during the second half of the film, one which revels in debauchery and setting; the dulcet tones of Bloc Party and copies of the final Harry Potter novel lying around place it in the summer of 2007. We sink even further into class satire as we meet Felix's parents, an absolutely glorious Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant who have an utter blast from the second they arrive on the scene; willing to apparently take in anyone (including a fabulously self-obsessed Carey Mulligan) it seems, and they're only too happy to allow Oliver to stay with them-and slowly become part of the furniture. Keoghan is terrifically odd, it's surely only a matter of time before he takes a big gong during awards season, although whether Saltburn has enough traction behind it to help him on the way here is another question. No-one plays weird better than Keoghan, and here he displays a convincing depiction of someone who's hard up and awkward, although his eyes frequently suggest something more sinister lurking beneath. That darker side is something that slowly comes alive as he becomes more and more entwined in Saltburn, observed with fascination by Oliver's family; his seeming ordinariness is something that Pike and Grant are so unfamiliar with, they can't quite make him out. In Saltburn's grounds lies a maze (another interesting if perhaps unknowing Harry Potter reference) at the center of which stands a statue of the Minotaur. In Greek mythology, the Minotaur was the unnatural offspring of a woman and a beast, and grew in both size and ferociousness; and due to no natural nourishment, began to devour humans. This is an interesting metaphor for Saltburn and perhaps more importantly Oliver; Fennell's film at times feels like the deranged child of human and beast, we spend time in a place where money is no object and the filthy rich literally drape themselves over their own wealth. In the end, the film nearly devours itself from the inside out, but is held together by the wonderful performances. Saltburn is an absolute blast, a flawed, darkly satirical comment on the rich that doesn't hit the heights of last year's Triangle of Sadness, yet more than justifies its overstuffed existence. 7.4/10