SALTBURN – Review by Nadine Whitney
“Lots of people get lost in Saltburn,” says the inscrutable butler Duncan (Paul Rhys) to Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) as he is found in a part of the sprawling manse that he shouldn’t be in. “You can never leave Saltburn,” Oliver narrates to a then unknown presence. Everybody who lives in, or visits Saltburn is somehow lost, somehow disoriented, somehow distorted, except, perhaps for the golden boy Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) the heir to the crested Catton family.
Emerald Fennell’s dark satire of obsession, jealousy, and desire winks at the audience with the kind of knowing that they think they will figure it all out. And, indeed, some of it is very easy to figure out with its references to Highsmith, Waugh (the author actually gets name checked), and the work of Ruth Rendell and Barbara Vine. However, it’s not so much the how and why of Saltburn where the pleasure resides, but the manner in which Fennell presents the wicked tale of excess.
Set in 2003 scholarship student Oliver Quick reaches the hallowed halls of Oxford and is soon set apart because of his Oxfam fashions and Lancastrian accent. He’s undeniably bright, brighter than many of his silver spoon counterparts, but a permanent outsider – a “Nigel No Friends” until he catches the eye of Felix (an eye he has been quietly stalking) through doing him a favour. An uneasy trauma dump later where Oliver recounts his rough upbringing in Prescot and the death of his alcoholic father and the lack of care from his drug addicted mother, and Oliver is on the edge of being in part of the beautiful people. A rivalry which began in a tutor’s class with Farleigh Start (Archie Madekwe) Felix’s queer, half-American cousin spills over as Oliver is invited to spend a halcyon summer at Saltburn.
The dizzying grounds and halls of Saltburn are filled with eccentric characters. Felix’s ex-model mother, Elspeth (Rosamund Pike) who simply cannot tolerate anything that is not beautiful. Sir James Catton (Richard E. Grant) who appears to be the product of aristocratic inbreeding but is slightly cannier than he appears. Venetia Catton (Alison Oliver) a damaged bulimic and masochist. Added to the mix is “Poor Dear Pamela” (Carey Mulligan) a fashionista with substance abuse issues who is hiding out away from a Russian oligarch she met in rehab. Saltburn is a place of Dionysian excess tempered with the expected upper-class manners which Oliver must learn how to navigate in order to survive the devouring and self-devouring occupants.
Yet Oliver is no mere babe in the woods. He’s something else. He soon learns how to seduce (sometimes literally) every member of the family by playing to their vanities. He might be Felix’s latest charity case, the toy of the season who will be dropped when Felix is bored, but Oliver has other plans. It only takes a nudge to manipulate these ‘Vile Bodies’ who have remained safe because of their privilege. Scratch the surface and there is nothing there. Only Farleigh realises the game Oliver is playing because to an extent he has to play it too – holding out the beggar’s bowl because his mother was dumped after a bad marriage that the family didn’t approve of (his father was black) and trying to stay in the Catton’s good graces so he and his mother don’t starve.
Fennell’s baroque psychosexual thriller wants you to have fun. There are lines that are spun with a golden malice. She has no pity for the upper crust and delights in displaying how insular they are and how easily they wield their wealth and titles. Their peccadillos are supposed to be transgressive, but in effect they are just the result of bored rich people needing their fix from extending a form of noblesse oblige.
As for Oliver Quick, Barry Keoghan is perfect as playing the obsessed sociopath who wheedles his way into the Catton’s precious milieu. Fennell doesn’t mind getting heavy handed with the satirical elements. She doesn’t mind if you laugh at a fallen angel slumped at the base of a statue of a Minotaur. She wants you to notice that Oliver is later styled to look like Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Every truly messed up set piece is designed to elicit a guffaw – from Oliver licking up Felix’s spunk filled bathwater to a freshly dug grave scene which should be shocking but is the natural extension of the psychosexual delirium of the film.
Much credit for the work must go to the exquisite production design by Suzie Davis and the snaking and disorienting camerawork delivered by Linus Sandgren, the score by Hugh Brunt which is added to by perfect early noughties needle drops including Ladytron, MGMT, Arcade Fire, and an unforgettable use of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s ‘Murder on the Dancefloor.’ The costume design by Sophie Canale is also spectacular, especially when Fennell takes us to the Catton’s ‘A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream’ inspired costume birthday party given for Oliver.
“I wasn’t in love with him. Of course, I loved him. But was I in love with him?” Oliver confesses to the unknown presence about Felix. Felix is in essence the avatar of the maxim “People want to sleep with him, other people want to be him” (applied in cruder terms to many celebrities). Jacob Elordi’s impossible beauty makes it entirely believable that anyone could become transfixed by him.
Emerald Fennell is a fearless director, and although Saltburn doesn’t quite reach the heights of Promising Young Woman it does offer a cold-blooded but riotous ride through the minds of people who have spent too long looking into cracked mirrors hoping to see a reflection of something worthwhile looking back at them. People who want to be watched, admired, and seen – people who should probably realise that sometimes the people looking in at them know exactly their worth.
