Saltburn. I’m usually quite certain how I feel about a film immediately after viewing, if not during. This one? Not so much.
I adored director Emerald Fennell’s prior flick Promising Young Woman, which had a similar candy-coated corrosiveness about it but also a supremely clear POV on the ills of toxic masculinity. Promising Young Woman was like the cinematic progeny of Legally Blonde, Dirty Harry, Heathers, Clueless, and Death Wish. And I was there for all of it. (Star Carey Mulligan can do no wrong in my book.)
Saltburn (on Amazon Prime) takes a comparable scorched earth satirical approach – so pitch black it barely ekes out as satire and leans more low-key horror/thriller. Its eat-the-rich (sometimes quite literally) raison d’etre is appealing in these inflationary days. And I suppose every generation needs its own version of Single White Female, and it was only a matter of time before someone mashed that time-worn concept up with Brideshead Revisited by way of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Where the Wild Things Are. The neo-Shakespearean sexual fluidity of louche landed gentry lounging about their summer country estate is ever a vibe.
Into this world wanders squinchy-faced Oliver, played by a transfixing Barry Keoghan, a compelling mix of wayward son and Machiavellian schemer. You see, he seems to have a puppyish crush on his golden god of a college classmate Felix Catton (a lovingly languid Jacob Elordi). Felix takes pity on Oliver who by all appearances has very little in the way of resources (financial, emotional), and Felix invites “Ollie” home for the summer to stay at the palatial family estate “Saltburn.”
Once there, we are introduced to the rest of the Catton clan, like a syphillitic fever dream if Agatha Christie had penned a truly grotesque episode of AbFab. And then it all gets rather Ten Little Indians meets Flowers in the Attic.
Rosamund Pike as matriarch Elspeth nearly runs away with the movie at this point, and honestly is the only actor (save Richard E. Grant as her feckless hubby) who really seems to *get* the assignment here. This is Noel Coward/Oscar Wilde/Anton Chekhov for the TikTok generation. Every caustic aside must drip with honey, and every action must come from a place of such spoiled boredom that one wonders if the character even has a pulse. Pike nails it and gives the film an arch momentum.
I won’t spoil any twists or surprises, but, unlike Promising Young Woman, Saltburn rather telegraphs its punches. And the gross-out moments all seem contrived to create more internet buzz than propel the sordid tale. That said, I can’t imagine that anyone who has ever seen any of the previously aforementioned movies or, hell, read a Sherlock Holmes … or Hardy Boys story would be shocked by the film’s “big reveal.” As Oliver tells Elspeth, “And you have no natural predators … [dramatic winking pause] well, almost none.”
But if you want to see Keoghan dance about in his altogether ad nauseum to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s early oughts disco classic “Murder on the Dance Floor,” then this is the movie for you. Goodnight and good luck!
