Class barriers and hidden truths
A scholarship student catapulted into a new world
Saltburn (R, 127 mins) In cinemas now Directed by Emerald Fennell Reviewed by Jen Shieff
Wistful, slightly disabled Dominic in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) was played by Barry Keoghan who now plays, quite brilliantly, Oliver Quick, a bright scholarship student starting out at Oxford, in Emerald Fennell’s new film Saltburn, a not-too-distant cry from her ”#MeToo” film Promising Young Woman (2020), for which she won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2021.
Oliver finds his path blocked, not by powerful men as in the #MeToo films, but by social class. He’s a lonely outsider, looked down on by the Eton types he’s trying to befriend.
But almost from the get-go, something’s amiss with Oliver, who’s a bit too earnest, a bit too humble, a misfit who’s at the same time dancing to his own tune.
When he becomes drawn into the world of aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), things look up for Oliver in unexpected ways.
The pair are first brought together over Felix’s flat bike tyre, when Oliver, desperately wanting to move into Felix’s orbit, lends him his fully functioning bike.
Grateful to him and moved when he hears about his troubled home life, Felix decides to come to Oliver’s rescue by taking him home to Saltburn for the summer holiday.
Saltburn is a French Gothic 18thcentury sprawling country house with many sinister staff.
On arrival, Oliver listens outside the door while Felix’s family — Lady Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), Sir James (Richard E. Grant), Felix’s younger sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) and vacuous overstaying guest Poor Dear Pamela (Carey Mulligan) — discuss him as if it’s their right to say anything about anyone. Emerald Fennell seems to be taking a satirical swipe at them, making them into cut-outs rather than real people, characteristics that are even more strongly emphasised when a family tragedy results in their inability to feel anything beyond a need for lunch.
“Of course I loved Felix,” Oliver admits, with the camera on him in one of the film’s many extreme closeups, “But was I in love with him?”
Luckily for Oliver, if anyone sensed he was in love with Felix, and thought ill of his peeping-Tom behaviour, it would be hard for them to object because many Oxford students were also in love with cool, beautiful Felix, privileged and yet empathetic and kind.
Only one of them, family hangeron Farleigh Start (Archie Madekwe), sees the face behind Oliver’s mask and becomes a thorn in his side.
Three graphic scenes, one involving menstrual blood, another bathwater and a third a weird copulation with a burial mound, could make some viewers cringe, but they add to the film’s intrigue and contribute to the unravelling of the mystery that is Oliver.
Handel’s rousing Zadok the Priest opens the film and it’s clear a momentous turn of events is ahead, but not the surprises involved in getting there.
■ Highly recommended, with a warning about scenes of an explicit nature.
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