Saltburn
Style suffocates substance in Emerald Fennell’s second film, a noirish take on Brideshead Reanimated.
A snake in the class: Barry Keoghan
Saltburn arrives with enormous expectations, as well it might. It is the sophomore outing of Emerald Fennell, the Oscar-winning writer-director of the stylish and shocking Promising Young Woman (she won for best screenplay). And, as for one in such a newly vaunted position, Ms Fennell has surrounded herself with top-of-the-line talent. And like Promising Young Woman, it is strong on shock value and style. Fennell is presumably aiming for a kind of Brideshead-noir, and as such has made some aesthetically dubious choices. Following the opening credits in unreadable Gothic script, the film cuts to the University of Oxford where the deep contrast of the colour palette – all silhouettes and dark shadows – blots out much of the imagery. She’s also opted for a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, further drawing attention to what is essentially style over content.
Barry Keoghan, hot off his Oscar nomination for The Banshees of Inisherin, is the impishly named Oliver Quick (very Dickensian), who is the Puck of our story. Long after the days of David Cameron and Boris Johnson, Oliver is struggling to fit in with the Oxonian smart set, himself being a student of limited financial means from a dysfunctional background. He is eager to be accepted by his peers and has devoured all fifty books on his summer reading list, much to the astonishment of his tutor (Reece Shearsmith). But Oliver wants to be more than a swat and is flattered when the dashing, aristocratic and hugely popular Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) takes him under his wing. Then, on an impulse, Felix invites Oliver back to his family estate, Saltburn, for the summer…
The crux of the film rests on the charms of Barry Keoghan, who is not unlike a Millennial Malcolm McDowell, the English actor whose puckish charisma turbo-charged such films as If…, A Clockwork Orange and Caligula. But, as fine an actor as Keoghan is, his seductive powers here are far from convincing. The film is better served by its supporting players, in particular the Australian actor Jacob Elordi (Elvis in the upcoming Priscilla) as Felix, and Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant as his comically batty parents. Pike is a fine comedienne who polishes her lines to a high comic sheen (“I’ve never wanted to know everything” – or, “where’s Liverpool?”). The setting of aristocratic grandeur and the Cattons’ supercilious butler (Paul Rhys standing in for Mrs Danvers from Rebecca) seem to be wildly out of time. Few stately homes of England today could wallow in such profligacy – give or take the Windsors. With the proliferation of new-tech billionaires, the milieu of such would be a far more fascinating sphere to explore. Saltburn itself seems to belong to another world, another century, when such institutions were satirised by the likes of Evelyn Waugh (who apparently was inspired by the Cattons’ forebears). And the film is not exempt from cliché: the opening blast of Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’ is a platitude in itself, although the rich, opulent score from Anthony Willis is more than a redeeming feature. All said, it’s a disappointing return of play for Fennell, although the film’s imagination and dark soul promises a talent still to be plumbed.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe, Carey Mulligan, Paul Rhys, Ewan Mitchell, Dorothy Atkinson, Shaun Dooley, Lolly Adefope, Sadie Soverall, Millie Kent, Will Gibson, Reece Shearsmith, Saga Spjuth-Säll.
Dir Emerald Fennell, Pro Emerald Fennell, Josey McNamara, Tom Ackerley and Margot Robbie, Screenplay Emerald Fennell, Ph Linus Sandgren, Pro Des Suzie Davies, Ed Victoria Boydell, Music Anthony Willis, Costumes Sophie Canale, Sound Adam Armitage, Dialect coach Elspeth Morrison.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/MRC/LuckyChap Entertainment/Lie Still-Warner Bros.
130 mins. UK/USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 17 November 2023. Cert. 15.
