A Reel Review: SALTBURN

In 2020, actress turned director Emerald Lilly Fennell shocked audiences with her acclaimed rape-revenge drama PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN. It was a film that had a lot to say and prove, and used its many twists and turns to help get her message across. Here in 2023, she ups her game in the shock department with SALTBURN. 

 

At Oxford University in 2006, scholarship student Oliver (Barry Keoghan), strikes up a friendship with Felix (Jacob Elordi), and secretly falls in love with him. At the end of semester, Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer with him at his family’s sprawling estate, called Saltburn…where Oliver stops at nothing to win Felix’s affections.

 

Written, directed, and produced by Fennell, SALTBURN begins as a love story, moves into a hang-out flick, and ends in nearly flat-out horror. At the overwhelming estate and imposing mansion staffed with maids and creepy butlers, Oliver parries with Felix’s gossiping parents (Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant), his sister Venetia Catton (Alison Oliver), and cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe)…all of which seem to get in his way of Oliver’s desire for Felix. At its hang-out stage, SALTBURN moves into teen-sex comedy territory, with everyone trying to fuck everyone at one time or another.

 

SALTBURN doesn’t have much by way of plot, and Fennell beefs things up with some pretty depraved shit. Twisted scenes such as full-frontal nudity dancing, menstruating sex, semen-licking, man-rape, and as close to necrophilia as we can get will have audiences squirming.  The purpose for all this is up for debate, and some of it seems to be there just for the sake of shock value. Shot mostly on one location, Fennell makes great use of the mansion, and it feels like a character in the film. The time period of 2006 is recaptured nicely. 

 

Acting is excellent. Barry Keoghan continues to impress and shows just how fearless he can be. Jacob Elordi and Alison Oliver almost steal the show. Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike are well-matched and are hilarious in a creepy sort of way. Cary Mulligan, who had the lead in PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN, appears in what amounts to an extended cameo and steals every scene she’s in. 

 

There’s a lot to be discussed in what Fennell is trying to say with SALTBURN. When the film moves into the third act and some even more twisted shit comes around, we leave the film realizing that we just spent 131 minutes with some very messed up people who would face no consequences for their actions. That, and the depravity would make SALTBURN a film to be discussed long after the credits roll. If that was Fennell’s goal, then mission accomplished. 

 

BOTTOM LINE: See it