By Robert St. Martin
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 12/22/23 – One of the most interesting recent films at a few local theatres is ”Saltburn” (MGM/Amazon. 2023), the tricky and ambitious second feature of British director Emerald Fennell, who previously received an Oscar for the screenplay of “Promising Young Woman” (2020).
”Saltburn” succeeds in slashing our expectations about how people are supposed to behave in polite society. This is her particular spin on an oft-told tale. She holds up a magnifying glass to a rarefied world and exposes the truth of human nature: its transactional tendencies, its queasy mix of desire and disposability.
In some ways, ”Saltburn” n is an update of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and set in 2006 before cell phone usage was widespread. The basic situation will remind viewers of aspects of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” – both in the high successful British television series from 1981 and the film version in 2008.
Barry Keoghan gives a deeply unsettling performance as Oliver Quick (a rather Dickensian name), a scholarship student at Oxford University who arrives as a freshman and, in time, ingratiates himself with the popular clique. Possibly dangerous weirdos are Keoghan’s forte, as seen in films like Lanthimos’ “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (2017).
Here, he shifts subtly and seamlessly to be whoever he must from moment to moment. Specifically, he sets his sights on Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi, who just appeared in “Priscilla”), a gorgeous and godlike aristocrat who moves through the world with cool ease and an almost naïve sense of noblesse oblige. Needy and creepy, Oliver wants to be with him but also wants to be him, and the patience of his sociopathic long game is impressive.
Elordi is so alluring as Felix Catton that it’s easy to see why men and women alike fall all over themselves for him. One of these is Felix’s American queer cousin, Farleigh (played by Archie Madekwe), also a student at Oxford. A bit of an outsider himself, Farleigh is suspicious of Oliver’s intentions, and he fiercely protects his own interests among the cool college students.
All these tensions and manipulations come to a slow boil over the summer when Felix invites Oliver to join his family in the summer at ”Saltburn,” Felix’s sprawling family estate. The tour he gives the awkward Oliver upon his arrival is particularly well-paced, and the droll way Fennell introduces the rest of Felix’s privileged family prompts wave after wave of laughter. Rosmund Pike is definitely over-the-top as Felix’s glamorous mother, Elspeth, a former model with a flair for melodrama and casual cruelty.
Richard E. Grant is sweetly shallow in an almost childlike way as Felix’s father, Sir James Catton. Allison Oliver is Felix’s chicly tragic sister, Venetia; her incisive, third-act bathtub monologue is a killer and among the film’s highlights. And “Promising Young Woman” star Carey Mulligan returns in a quietly hilarious supporting role as the family’s houseguest, Pamela, who has long overstayed her welcome. Oliver is surprised to find none other than Farleigh, the American cousin, also at “Saltburn” .
It’s when Oliver starts to pick away, as if at the wings of a trapped fly, at the family dynamics that ”Saltburn” is at its most compelling. Not unlike the Visitor played by Terence Stamp in Pasolini’s “Teorema” (1968), Oliver gently chisels away at each of the family members, Keoghan gives insouciant nudges to Felix, Venetia and Farleigh that edge up the familial tension notch by notch. Keoghan is perfectly cast for this, it’s difficult to imagine anyone else weaseling their way into the group’s affections while testing their loyalties so ruthlessly.
The larger forces guiding the masculinity and machinations of Oliver Quick as who fixates on wealthy classmate Felix Catton end up as a parasitic yet platonic relationship quite homoerotic, and Fennell seems to elevate the queer subtext of the film in a curious way.
“I wasn’t in love with him,” Oliver confesses of Felix at the start of the film. “I loved him, of course.”
While couched in the era’s “no homo” vernacular, the uncommonly plainspoken admission feels inconsistent with the character’s – and the society’s – emotional repression.
While the country estate lends itself naturally to a period setting, period these days means mid-2000s, so while Linus Sandgren’s cinematography and the 1:33 Academy Radio framing seem to almost transport us to the time of Evelyn Waugh or 
earlier. Oliver’s narrative framing, telling the story from an unnamed location in flashback, suggests a narrator not a hundred percent reliable from the very beginning. It becomes less a question of if Oliver is telling us the full story, as to what he’s leaving out as the summer unfolds.
There’s a point in ”Saltburn” where a character says that they “loved” and “hated” somebody else, going back and forth. This reflects the experience of watching the film. Some will adore Fennell’s sophomore feature, others will walk out, and most will be on the fence. That’s apparently by design. There’s something darker lurking behind the Catton estate’s towering doors.
For much of the film, we’re not sure where exactly that darkness is rooted. The mansion is like Wonderland contained under one roof. That might make Oliver the story’s Alice, although there may be a darkness within him as well. Fennell’s screenplay keeps you guessing who can be trusted – if anybody. Just as she did with Promising Young Woman, you never know where ”Saltburn” will take you next.
As excessive as ”Saltburn” can be, Fennell reminds us why we should stay with a movie until the credits roll. Fennell delivers a killer ending that puts much of the film into perspective. It doesn’t fix every detail, but the audience suddenly realizes what Fennell was going for from the opening scene. “Saltburn” is like completing a puzzle without the box to help.
At the film’s ending, Keoghan’s brooding blankness gives way to a hang-loose final scene, with a unreal naked dance scene that seems like the most wild commentary on the pretensions of English high society. Excessive, but that is part of the pleasure of this film.
