Saltburn
Director: Emerald Fennell
Writer: Emerald Fennell
Cast: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Archie Madekwe, Richard E. Grant, Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan, Alison Oliver
Seen on: 12./13.1.2025

Plot:
Oliver (Barry Keoghan) has received a scholarship to the University of Oxford, but his social awkwardness and lack of upper class upbringing mark him as an outsider. At least until he draws the attention of Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), beautiful, popular and rich. Felix and Oliver connect and Felix even invites Oliver to his family’s estate over the summer – Saltburn. Felix‘ family is eccentric, his cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe) is suspicious of Oliver and Oliver seems to have his own motivations.

Saltburn is a stylishly modern take on The Talented Mr. Ripley that shines with its performances and overdoes it a little with its provocations.

Like in her first feature, Promising Young Woman, Fennell shows off an impeccable sense of style paired with sociopolitical commentary in Saltburn. The two films also share that they like to provoke – and that they lose themselves a little in this provocation in the last minutes of the film.

Where Promising Young Woman took a look at gender and rape culture, Saltburn is much more concerned with class. It does acknowledge that these issues are not entirely unrelated, especially in Farleigh who is Black and gay and has the most precarious position within the family. But overall, this is about class disparities, and wanting to become the rich while also wanting to destroy them, loving them and hating them at the same time.

The film is at its peak when it shows us the Cattons as they really are, well-meaning and arrogant, thoughtless, cruel and warm. It affords them humanity while also showing how power and money corrupt and destroy. All of this contrasted with Oliver who is so damn sure that he is owed all of this himself (it is no coincidence that he is a white cis man) and yet doesn’t fit in at all.

The performances are really astounding. Keoghan is incredibly weasel-y and Mulligan and Pike are hilarious, but every actor here hits all the notes. It’s just when the film tries too hard to shock the audience that it crumbles a little, at least to a seasoned movie watcher like me. But I’ve seen my fair share of questionable masturbation practices, semen ingestion and period sex (in movies and outside of them), and would have rather focused on the characters than the thrills. But I didn’t mind them much either – and for the most part, was well able to enjoy Saltburn for what it is.

Summarizing: pretty good.