Jacob Elordi, Barry Keoghan
“SALTBURN” My rating: B-(In theaters)
131 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Good-looking but off-putting, Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” is yet another examination of British class warfare.
Fennell, who made a remarkable directing debut a couple of years back with the female revenge dramedy “Promising Young Woman,” here mines a favorite plot of English iconoclasts, that of a lowly commoner “adopted” by his societal betters.
Our protagonist is the delightfully named Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), whose freshman year at Oxford is highlighted by a growing friendship with the beautiful, charming, rich-as-hell Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi).
It’s an odd pairing. Oliver, while a good student, is something of a blank-faced emotional drone, definitely not one of the handsomely entitled sort Felix usually runs with.
They meet when Oliver does an unexpectedly generous and apparently selfless favor for Felix, and the latter decides that maybe this working-class kid provides just the sort of down-to-earth genuineness lacking in his posh life.
Upon learning that Oliver’s father has died of a drug overdose, Felix suggests Oliver spend the summer with him at his palatial family estate, Saltburn. Good times.
“Saltburn” touches on most of the plot points and characters common to this sort of enterprise.
There’s a cousin (Archie Madekwe) who hates the low-born OIiver from the get-go; a sad, substance-abusing sister (Sadie Soverall) who offers sexual promise; the mother (Rosamund Pike), eager to prove her open mindedness (“I was a lesbian for a while…too wet for me”) by doting on the lower-class visitor; the father (Richard E. Grant) so rich he can spend his days on his collecting obsessions.
There’s also another visitor, the freeloading Pamela (Carey Mulligan), one of Mother’s friends but now wearing out her welcome. Upon learning she has died a member of the household observes: “She’d do anything for attention.”
Mining some of the same psychological landscape as “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Fennell’s film slowly reveals that the harmlessly bland Oliver is in fact a sort of emotional vampire (in one shocking scene he appears to be feasting on menstrual blood). In fact, he’s the human version of the cuckoo, a bird that takes over other birds’ nests, destroying their eggs and substituting one of its own.
Rosamund Pike
The results are unashamedly misanthropic. “Saltburn” satirizes the ruling class, but its avenging angel proletarian “hero” is no better than his titled targets.
Given the contempt and cynicism on display, the film is watchable enough; it certainly doesn’t hurt that most of the roles have been taken by beautiful people.
Not that Barry Keoghan is beautiful, exactly. In the right light his potato face exudes a sort of brute animal cunning; at other times he can seem almost handsome. It’s the perfect chameleonic approach to a shifty character like Oliver.
And the film ends with a sequence so perfect — a naked Oliver dancing rapturously through the halls of Saltburn — that I’m almost willing to blow off my reservations. A strong finish is always a good thing.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 