Directed by Emerald Fennell
Year: 2023
Language: English
Shaun’s Score: 2.2/5 ★
Before Watching:
The Republic of Ireland has fewer residents than Alabama, but somehow the Emerald Isle continues to churn out more stars than a Midtown drag brunch’s Yelp page. Seriously, from Cillian Murphy and Paul Mescal to Collin Farrell and Andrew Scott, it seems that there really is a pot of gold at the end of Prime Video’s rainbow. The latest lad to (lucky) charm the big screen is Barry Keoghan, previously Oscar-nominated for his role in The Banshees of Inisherin. Keoghan has a strange allure to him (i.e. why he keeps inexplicably showing up in everything1), which has proven strong enough to land him a starring role in Emerald Fennell’s second feature film Saltburn.
In 2006, Oliver Quick (Keoghan) arrives for his freshman year at Oxford as an awkward social outcast, and accordingly develops an obsession with the “in-crowd” of affluent popular students led by Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). I’ve magnanimously chosen to forgive the fact that Keoghan looks to be in his 30s at best, but it is incredibly distracting. After doing Felix a favor, Oliver manages to sneak into this friend circle and shares the struggles of his parents’ substance abuse, eliciting a sympathetic response and drawing the two closer. The sudden death of Oliver’s father triggers an invitation from Felix to embark on a summer sojourn to his family’s estate “Saltburn.”2 Felix’s family, including his dry father Sir James (Richard Grant), garrulous mother Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), licentious sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), and acerbic cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe),3 welcomes Oliver with a combination of pity and fascination. But as the summer drags on and Oliver’s desires remain unfulfilled, trouble seeps into the estate.
The film has a clever construction, mirroring the class infiltration seen in Parasite or The Menu, but without the necessary attention to detail to tie the plot to the core message. Several gasp-worthy sexual scenes (including—in no particular order—soiled bathwater, menstrual fluid, and penetration of a… um, actually best not to spoil that one) are unusual enough to generate buzz online, but are not nearly provocative enough in context to mean anything. In fact, most of the film is just sloppy and self-interested, burying the actual coherent themes of lust and envy in a jumbled and under-explored whodunnit where you already know who done it from the start. Saltburn takes a swing at class commentary, but in being this poorly thought out, the only thing we’re left with is a few too many shots of Berry Keoghan’s potatoes.
“If the rich blithered as much in real life as they do in the movies,
they’d have been eaten long ago.”
-Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Fennell agrees that Saltburn isn’t quite “eat the rich,” but posits instead that it is a “lick the rich, suck the rich” movie.4 Despite a chuckle-worthy performance by Pike, the caricatures of the elite are flimsy and vapid. Ultimately, the film finishes irrevocably bland, unable to correct the same misapprehension that has damned British food for millennia: salt is not sufficient seasoning.
Saltburn premiered at the 50th Telluride Film Festival, and is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
After Watching:
Why on earth was this film shot in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio? There are enough dizzying close-ups and mistimed formalist tropes to make the cult followers of Midsommar lap up cinematographer Linus Sandgren’s bathwater, but I’m not buying it. The fancy camerawork and absurd sex scenes largely work to cover up a lack of cogent themes—by the end of the movie, am I just supposed to see the middle class as conniving worms? Fennell almost digs into the potentially more interesting discussion of race in elite British families, but that thread is abandoned after a few quips from Farleigh. I’m sure Meghan Markle was edging herself just waiting for Farleigh to drop a truth bomb on Saltburn, but his character is wasted (and then inexplicably resurrected). Instead, we focus on how Oliver’s obsession with Felix spans Bed Bath & Beyond (the grave).
Nevermind that the mechanics of Oliver’s slow siege of Saltburn are fuzzy at best, even his precise motivations are never explored. We’re never privy to the true crux of his anger and resentment (the corned beef and potatoes of his psyche, if you will), and why that pushes him to kill. Admittedly, if you just want a trashy, colorful flick, then Saltburn can manage to scratch that itch while being the most uncomfortable family movie night since Oldboy (2003).
Amazon is on thin ice this season. First Red White & Royal Blue, then this (which was also marketed as steamy and salacious, but look how that turned out). And after that last shot of Barry Keoghan sham-rocking naked through the house like he’s in The Full Monty (1997), the only thing that’s Dublin is my desire to cancel my Prime subscription.
He’s also dipped his pale toe into superhero films, where he’s the new Joker in the Robert Pattinson Batman franchise, as well as one of the Eternals in the MCU.
Yeah, it’s one of those U.K. plots of land that just has a name, like Skyfall.
The Salt in our Stars.
Some Euphoria fans would likely oblige for Jacob Elordi.