‘Saltburn’ Movie Review [Philadelphia Film Festival 2023]: Emerald Fennell’s Sophomore Effort Is Wild, Lusty, and Delectably Twisted
Photo from the Philadelphia Film Festival
From Jeremy Kibler
Emerald Fennell already showcased a provocative voice with her Oscar-winning 2020 directorial feature debut, Promising Young Woman, which was viciously confrontational, sobering, and wickedly funny. No sophomore slump, Saltburn is today’s kinkier answer to The Talented Mr. Ripley. It’s wild, bitchy, lusty, and delectably twisted, distinguished by an exceptionally talented cast, Fennell’s biting script, and her stylish direction.
Barry Keoghan plays Oliver Quick, a scholarship boy in his first year at Oxford University during the mid-2000s. From afar, he admires another student, the sexy and privileged Felix (Jacob Elordi), whose life couldn’t be easier. As Oliver falls in with Felix and his crew, he ingratiates himself into getting invited for an allegedly “relaxed” summer at Saltburn, Felix’s aristocratic family’s sprawling, lavish country estate. There, Oliver is welcomed in open arms by Felix’s mother, Elspeth (played with perfect, deliciously cutting delivery by Rosamund Pike), and father, Sir James (an equally hilarious Richard E. Grant). Then there’s also Felix’s stylish, perpetually drunk sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), who might be on to Oliver more than her vapid demeanor suggests, as is their catty, suspicious queer cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe). Everyone is casually cruel and planning parties all of the time, while Oliver keeps longing for Felix, or maybe to be Felix. Is it infatuation or jealousy? Is Oliver being honest with anyone? Is it better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody? Just ask Tom Ripley.
It’s possible that Saltburn deceptively begins as one thing and morphs into something else, but that something else has always been in motion. It all starts with Oliver’s desire: do we buy that anyone would be this enamored with Felix? Yes, yes, we do. With Felix being played by the alluring Jacob Elordi, we can’t really blame Oliver. Barry Keoghan has to play different versions of Oliver, depending on who he’s with and what he needs from them. Even as the actor has a face for playing dangerous weirdos (and apparently into manipulating and splitting families apart), Keoghan is quite beguiling and fearlessly weasels into the headspace of this enigma. Pike, Grant, Oliver, and Madekwe are all sensational, finding vulnerability within their acerbic asides. Carey Mulligan is also very funny in only a couple of scenes as a vapid, flighty houseguest, credited as “Poor Dear Pamela,” who’s long overstayed her welcome.
The story is one we have surely seen before, in which an interloper latches him or herself onto another person and insinuates themselves into that person’s world in opportunistic and murderous ways. However, we haven’t seen this story told by Fennell with gallows humor and her bold style aided by Linus Sandgren’s gorgeously moody photography. Languid summer days of playing tennis, smoking and getting drunk, and lounging by the pool almost take on a care-free dreaminess, especially within an inspired montage cued to MGMT’s “Time to Pretend.”
There are at least three unforgettably perverse and intimate moments in Saltburn that will have audiences unsure how to respond. Look for a bathtub, a moment of cunnilingus, and a fresh grave! Maybe you’ll be shocked, uncomfortable, nervously giggling, weirdly turned on, or all of the above. Then there’s the ending, a tracking shot around Saltburn accompanied by Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s exuberant “Murder on the Dancefloor.” It’s a cynical, pitch-black victory for one character, but tragic for everyone else.
Fennell may walk us back through the sequence of dominoes falling more than she needed to when we can easily infer the long game, but she nonetheless orchestrates such a playfully callous ride of debauchery and dark machinations. Lest one think the film is just another variation on eating the rich, save your complete opinion until the very end as Saltburn is a razor-sharp takedown of class with a psychosexual bent that disturbs and exhilarates in equal measure.
Rating: 4.5/5
Saltburn was the closing film at the Philadelphia Film Festival. It opens in theaters nationwide on November 23, 2023.
