Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, reviewed.

★★★★☆

The year is 2006, and scholarship dreg Oliver (Barry Keoghan) is on his way to Oxford University only to find his world turned upside down after toff Felix (Jacob Elordi), with whom he is infatuated, invites him to stay at his family’s obscenely privileged retreat Saltburn for the summer.

Oliver loves Felix, that is if love is the same as infatuation. But as time goes on, so too does Oliver’s longing lust for Felix, but he’ll just have to settle with watching from the sidelines (or through the door crack), having “vampire” sex with Felix’s sister (Alison Oliver), and non-vampire sex with cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe). Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant play the part of insufferable creatures so well. Insufferable aristocratic creatures, and insufferable parental creatures.  Oliver becomes cosy with the Catton’s, a helpful relationship indeed for when death occurs…

Cinematographer Linus Sandgren never allows the naturalistic lighting to dimmish the vibrancy of anything that pops, just as he did with La La Land. Both films glow with primary and secondary colour, but there’s still a grounded sense of reality.

Emerald Fennell displays an undying sense of confidence in her material here even when that confidence goes against her own sanity, never backing down from depravity when a more unimaginative director would have. This kind of confidence in the grotesque is rarely seen in British filmmakers today, but if Fennell is going to be the next Ken Russell then I welcome the descent into depravity. Who ever said British drama had to constantly be an onslaught of rag mop dullness? Slurping that water was grotesque, but hardly dull!

The screenplay seldom cares about structural discipline. For most of the runtime, we loiter and linger at Saltburn just as they do. This is a point where Fennell’s confidence in her material could have reigned it in. The supposed twist ending is hardly a twist at all, and the “reveal” was left too late, leaving any impact it could have had being neutered. As an audience, we should have been allowed to get on board with the bigger picture earlier.

I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of a mid-2000s setting for this was, other than to allow a setlist of songs like that to seem justifiable. In all honestly though, who on earth cares? Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder On The Dancefloor playing over the credits will make sure you leave with a spring in your step, but you’ll be wondering if you should have one after what you just witnessed.

Saltburn is hardly a deep dive look into the excess privilege of the wealthy elites of our country. In fact, it’s not unfair to suggest its not saying anything about class privilege at all other than “look how obscene this all is!”. It is however a beautiful gateway of perversion and depravity to seep back into British cinema, as well as a headliner film of an up-and-coming subgenre… wealthsploitation.