Emerald Fennell's Saltburn is a fever dream of beauty, excess and decadence, but what is left when you wake?
Sadly, a very unsatisfied feeling, as this Brideshead Revisited meets The Talented Mr Ripley on acid has a style-over-substance problem. It's a one-perfect-shot kind of movie, too preoccupied with shock value to offer something really worth remembering.
That's not to say the ride is not worth it — Saltburn has an undeniably captivating nature, as well as a luscious visual language involving every aspect of the movie.
It's a Gothic psychosexual thriller filled with killer one-liners and gorgeous imagery, and yet it is constantly battling against itself, suffering from pop-culture indigestion and despite a vampiric thirst for impact, it fails to land anything meaningful.
Set in 2006's Oxford, Saltburn follows scholarship student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), who dreams of earning a place among the popular, elite students who barely acknowledge his existence.
One of them, Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), cruelly describes him as "a scholarship boy that buys his clothes from Oxfam" to justify avoiding mingling with anyone of his ilk.
What to Read Next
However, thanks to a happy coincidence, Oliver befriends handsome rich boy Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who happens to be the Queen Bee in a very exclusive, all-posh university clique.
Their friendship flourishes thanks to very personal confessions, and so Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer in his country home, Saltburn.
If university life was tainted with the wealthy's excess, the Catton family's estate is the embodiment of their luscious, decadent existence.
And Oliver can't get enough of it.
After earning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with her critically acclaimed debut Promising Young Woman, Fennell proves her forte is actually building a unique visual world.
That vision comes alive as Oliver arrives at Saltburn, which promises a classic Gothic story setting with cited references like The Go-Between, Rebecca, The Remains of the Day and Maurice.
"That's what I wanted to look at: if that genre could be squeezed really tightly. And what would pop when it was squeezed," Fennell said in an interview with The Face.
In that tight squeeze, the filmmaker gets to add some mid-noughties realness, from movie nights with Superbad and The Ring to obsessive reading of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, while the wealthy youth play tennis in tuxedos soaked in expensive champagne.
The movie's bluntness still finds moments for subtle meanings, utilising clever mirror shots that play into the two-faced, deceiving personality of the main character.
So: what does pop when the revamped Gothic genre is squeezed? Not as much as we'd hope, that's for sure.
Saltburn is a tale of dark obsessions as self-involved and empty as its deeply hedonistic characters.
What is the movie really trying to say about privilege, our fascination with elites, our obsession with beauty, and our never-ending aspiration of being accepted by the popular kids?
The ideas are there, but they get buried in the same grave one character decides to have sex with (yes, with – absurd as that sounds) at one point in the movie. Perhaps it's the best unintentional metaphor we could hope for.
The incredibly messy third act drags every build-up into the mud, with all that pop-culture obsession, gorgeous setting and astounding cast the only things left standing. Granted, that's not nothing. Perhaps it's even enough.
Still, when everything is banking on shock value and the shock has way exceeded its value, there's not much left to pick through.
Saltburn is released in UK cinemas on November 17.
Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over eight years. Based in the UK, she is a former deputy movies editor at Digital Spy, and previously worked for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas. Mireia's work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema and GamesRadar+ in the UK. She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.
During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London. LinkedIn
