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Saltburn, the second feature from acclaimed Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell opened the 2023 London Film Festival last night.
Eat the rich was last year's big cinematic trend — with Saltburn, Fennell tries to take things a step further. Not only does her central character, Ollie (Barry Keoghan) eat the rich, but he plays with them for while, seasons them with salt, gobbles them up, and, as one character even says, “licks the plate”.
The film opens on Ollie, a bespectacled, unassuming nerd, arriving for his first year at Oxford University. The year is 2006. After a friendless few months, he is taken under the wing of popular pretty boy, Felix (played by Euphoria's Jacob Elordi). After hearing about Ollie's traumatic, impoverished upbringing, Felix offers him an invitation — to spend the summer at Saltburn, his family home, along with his cousin, Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), his sister, Venetia (Alison Oliver), his father (Richard E. Grant) and his mother (Rosamund Pike).
A rambling historic estate, Saltburn provides the lavish, leering backdrop for the psychodrama that unfolds. Ollie is, by all appearances, out of place amongst the elite. He doesn't say the right things. He doesn't understand their dining customs. He doesn't have the right dinner jacket. But as his stay stretches on, we begin to sense that Ollie is only playing a role — that he knows more than he is letting on. If you thought this was going to just be a noughties take on Brideshead Revisited, the film seems to say, think again.
Things come to a head when tragedy strikes during the extravagant costume party the family throws in honour of Ollie's birthday. They opt for a Midsummer Night's Dream theme, giving the drunken, hazy night an unsettling aesthetic suggesting both bacchanalian excess and midsummer madness.
Saltburn is admittedly, filled with some rather obvious tropes and plot twists and Fennell often relies a little too heavily on in-your-face shock in an attempt to stir up an increasingly manic tone. Nevertheless, Fennell's tale of overindulgent excess and all-consuming desire is painted in rich, deep colours and set to a soundtrack of delicious noughties needledrops — it is, at the very least, both wickedly fun and visually sumptuous.
Despite some flaws and, perhaps, some thematic simplicity, it is also filled with exceptional performances. As Felix's mother, Elsbeth, Pike gives a perfectly pitched portrayal of airy upper class malaise that is both laugh-out-loud hilarious and, ultimately, surprisingly touching. Carey Mulligan also makes a brief but impactful appearance as Elsbeth's “friend” Pamela — a hanger-on whose hilarious, vapid presence soon becomes a subtle tragic footnote in the family's life. As for Keoghan as Ollie, he offers an intensity that drives the film to its excessive conclusion. Conversations with Friends' Alison Oliver gives a wonderfully layered performance as the troubled Venetia.
A re-examination of Elvis and Priscilla's legacy.
So far, audiences seem to be enthralled with Fennell's twisted take on eat the rich. Here are some of the reactions so far:
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Saltburn will have a limited theatrical release on 24 November before a wider expansion on 1 December.
Pugh plays Jean Tatlock, a real-life psychiatrist and love interest to Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer.
