Film review: ‘Saltburn’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
Saltburn, is writer/director Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to her striking but erratic feature debut, Promising Young Woman. More stylistically assured than that film, Saltburn is an enjoyably strange, dark satire of class consciousness, poisonous wealth and social exclusion so full of indelible scenes that we can mostly overlook some slightly shaky storytelling.
Barry Keoghan, who was unforgettable in the Banshees of Inisherin, leads a terrific cast as the bookish, introverted new Oxford student Oliver Quick. Isolated in his creakingly traditional residential college, he soon forms an attraction to the tall, floppy-haired campus lothario named (believe it or not) Felix Catton (Aussie Jacob Elordi). Apparently welcoming his friendship, Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer break at his super rich, old money family’s vast palatial home, Saltburn. There, Oliver encounters Felix’s strange family of upper-class grotesques: permanently dazed mother Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), loopy father Sir James (Richard E. Grant) and sexually provocative sister Venetia (Alison Oliver). Joining them are louche family friend Pamela (a near-unrecognisable Carey Mulligan) who claims to be dating a Russian gangster and Oliver’s nemesis, the mocking fellow student Farleigh (Archie Madekwe, Gran Turismo). In this weird, unhinged world Oliver finds unfamiliar acceptance but also bitter resentment at his presence there, a situation that can’t end well.
There are echoes here of The Talented Mr Ripley, with the creepy outsider trying to inveigle himself into a world of social acceptance and privilege, the queer romance of Call Me By Your Name and some of the otherworldly creepiness and vicious humour of Yorgos Lanthimos’ films. Despite these apparent references, Saltburn’s distinct oddball style prevents it from feeling too derivative.
Fennell and cinematographer Linus Sandgren have crafted a film that’s ravishing to the eyeball with swooning shots of the sprawling estate littered with pretty young things and hallucinogenic scenes of anarchic, drug-fuelled raves that recall the frenzy of the last film Sandgren lensed, the intoxicatingly crazed Babylon.
Saltburn, does, however, feel more like a swirling collection of images and vignettes than a substantial and compelling story. It seems Fennell was most interested in creating a feverish, off-kilter world in which everyone was smeared (often literally) in the filth and craziness of these hideous elitists. For the most part, Fennell conjures a convincing alternate reality although she indulges a few clichés like spiral staircases to convey mental instability and occasionally becomes repetitive, causing the film’s momentum to stall. Admittedly, she regains the audience’s attention with some joltingly confronting (and unhygienic) scenes.
Keoghan, who has delivered a terrific collection of performances in recent films, is once again wonderful. Veering between sympathetic and sinister, threatened and threatening, he makes Oliver an intriguing and hypnotic figure. Jacob Elordi, as the definition of rakish youth is also terrific. Lounging in the sun atop his family castle’s battlements or selecting his lover for the night, he’s utterly convincing as someone extremely comfortable with their apparent superior status within his social group and the world at large. Rosamund Pike just about steals the film, though, as Elspeth, a politely amoral matriarch who bears more than a passing resemblance to Joanna Lumley’s superbly sozzled Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous. Richard E. Grant’s talents, though, feel somewhat wasted, at least in the early part of the film, where he just chimes in with a few comically silly comments. Later in the film, though, as his world begins to sour, we see the true character of his Sir James emerge and a stronger performance from Grant.
Saltburn is more an exercise in style and bizarre social satire than a complete film but what it serves up is often mesmerising.
Nick’s rating: ***1/2
Genre: Drama/ Thriller/ Comedy.
Classification: MA15+.
Director(s): Emerald Fennell.
Release date: 16th Nov 2023.
Running time: 131 mins.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.