Saltburn, from Promising Young Woman writer-director Emerald Fennell, is a hypercolour romp through the world of English aristocracy. Just like Fennell's debut, it's poppy, weird and violent – but this time it's also very, very gay.
The film focuses on Oliver (Barry Keoghan), a middle-class Oxford student and social outcast who becomes progressively more obsessed with classmate Felix (Jacob Elordi) and his Downton Abbey-esque family life on the titular Saltburn estate.
This obsession is the key thing that makes it, in our opinion, explicitly gay.
(Saltburn spoilers follow.)
The exact nature of Oliver and Felix's relationship comes up immediately in the movie. Saltburn's opening line has Oliver, talking to an unknown party, asking the question on everyone's mind – was he in love with Felix? He tells us, no, but he did love him.
This distinction in affection seems important to Oliver, but when you scratch a little below the surface it's clearly not that simple.
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There are lots and lots of moments throughout the movie where Oliver's obsession transforms into desire, but on the surface he and Felix never have a romantic relationship. This has caused some viewers and fans to debate the status of the movie as a 'gay film'.
But just because there's not a sex scene between the two characters doesn't mean the movie isn't deeply queer, and to suggest so misses the point entirely.
First, the obvious. There's literally a scene where Barry Keoghan lies down in Felix's bathwater and laps up his semen from around the drain. It's a pretty wild, and very erotic, moment not only because of what's literally happening on screen, but also because of the visual metaphor of Oliver rimming the bathtub.
We wrote about how the idea of ingesting the Catton family is key to understanding Saltburn's sexuality, but this moment is particularly useful from an LGBTQ+ point of view.
There's also a scene later on, equally shocking, where Oliver strips down and penetrates Felix's grave. This scene is more abstract than other moments in the movie, and it's unclear how real what we see here is, but it does show the audience how sexual desire and obsession and jealousy have all become intertwined in the character's head.
There's also the gay sex scene. As part of Oliver's interloping, he sets his sights on Felix's cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), and attempts to discredit him in the eyes of the family.
The first step in this scheme is a seduction that includes Oliver initiating sex with Farleigh by sitting naked on top of him. But there's more to the queerness of Fennell's movie than just its explicit moments.
The movie owes a lot to another key piece of cinema about queer desire and obsession: The Talented Mr Ripley. Similarly to Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf's relationship, Saltburn makes us wonder if Oliver wants to be with Felix or just wants to be him.
By the end of the movie, it seems obviously the latter, but we spend a lot of time watching Oliver tackling the same question as themes of desire crop up again and again.
A focal point of that desire is Oliver and Felix's adjoining bathroom. Their two bedrooms are separated by this shared space they're often nude in, a space where Felix masturbates. It should probably go without saying, but this is gay.
The bathroom is a physical symbol of how close they are to each other's sexuality, and how close they could be to intimacy. It's all made very literal during one scene where Oliver overhears Felix having a wank and we watch his hand hover over the doorknob as he debates whether or not to insert himself into the situation.
As with The Talented Mr. Ripley, desire is muddied by jealousy throughout the movie with Oliver's envy often revealing itself in how he views Felix's romantic life.
While at university, Oliver almost sleeps with Felix's girlfriend, a move on her part to try and make him jealous. It seems like Oliver wants to imitate Felix and possess what he possesses – reducing the girlfriend to an object in a deeply misogynistic way.
But there's also a way of viewing this interaction, and the many scenes where he watches Felix have sex or flirt, as Oliver being jealous of Felix's partners. In his fantasies, who is Oliver embodying?
The movie's depiction of Oliver's sexuality places him broadly under the Bi+ umbrella, as we see him engage in a relationship (sort of) with Felix's sister Venetia. However, when we're talking about queerness in this context, we're specifically talking about Oliver's desire for another man, rather than his own specific orientation.
Trying to analyse his relationship with Venetia is also complicated because, if he's trying to become Felix, then we head to a strange incestuous space.
A hint to this comes during a breakfast conversation about Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, the latter of whom, one of the Cattons says, had relations with his sister. Meanwhile, Shelley's sexuality has long been the subject of speculation and rumours.
All of the above makes it seem so clear that Saltburn is a deeply queer movie. So why has there been pushback, or a reluctance, to call it one? Or, at least, a reluctance to embrace an LGBTQ+ interpretation of its themes and characters?
Over the years, LGBTQ+ people have grown used to, and then grown very, very tired of, seeing ourselves minimised on screen. We read between the lines to identify with characters, pick up on hints, and embrace the absence of heterosexuality in order to see ourselves in the fiction we love and support. Put simply: we are used to making meals out of breadcrumbs.
Modern queer audiences have grown unhappy with this mode, and that's entirely understandable. But we have to avoid throwing the baby out with the questionable bathwater because, as much as concrete character representation is important, seeing queer stories operating on this more abstract level also matters.
Queerness as a way of moving through the world (and society) and life is bigger than just a single character's romantic relationships and stories, in film or elsewhere. It can operate at a level beyond that.
When we say that Saltburn – or The Talented Mr Ripley – is a queer film, that doesn't become less true because it lacks a central romance. Ideas, motifs and themes can all encompass a broad idea of queerness.
And that should be especially evident in a film that ends with a fully naked Barry Keoghan dancing to Sophie Ellis-Bextor's seminal 'Murder on the Dancefloor'.
Saltburn is out now in cinemas.
Ali is Hearst UK's deputy social strategy director. He has been covering TV and movies for more than six years, all while wrangling Digital Spy's social media and video channels - for which he received a PPA 30 Under 30 award. He specializes in writing about anime, LGBTQ+ representation, science fiction, and comic book adaptations. Recently he's begun collecting Star Wars interviews like Infinity Stones and has spoken with The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal, Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy and the creative team behind The Bad Batch. Dave Filoni, you're next.
