Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe, Carey
Mulligan
One of the unwritten rules of film criticism is that you should avoid
criticising a film for not being the movie you wanted. But what if a film
fools you into thinking it's exactly the movie you wished for, only to
ultimately reveal itself as something far more disappointing? That's the
quandary I find myself confronting as I attempt to assess my feelings
regarding writer/director Emerald Fennell's Saltburn. For most of its running time it fooled me into believing it was a far
more interesting film than it actually is, and I was largely enthralled
throughout.
For some baffling reason, the movie takes place in 2006. Usually when
movies are set in the recent past it's to avoid the disruption modern
technology might bring to a thriller plot, but the internet, social media
and cellphones all existed in 2006. Anyway, it's here that we meet Oliver,
the latest of actor Barry Keoghan's signature creeps. Oliver is a
scouser on a scholarship to Oxford, where he struggles to fit in with the
posh kids. That's until he has a meet cute with Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), the sort of popular boy The Kinks were singing about in 'David Watts'
("He is so gay and fancy free, he is of pure and noble breed."). Come to
think of it, Oliver is a lot like the narrator of that song ("I am a dull and simple lad, cannot tell water from champagne, and I have never met the Queen."). Just as the narrator wishes he could be
like David Watts, so too does Oliver envy Felix's life, though there's also
a hint that he may be in love with the toff.
Taking pity on Oliver's somewhat dubious tales of working class woe, Felix
invites him to spend the summer at Saltburn, his old money family's
sprawling stately home. There Oliver meets the various goofballs that make
up Felix's kin: his shallow ex-model mum Elsbeth (a hilarious
Rosamund Pike); his dotty dad Sir James (an underused
Richard E. Grant); his vulnerably horny sister Venetia (a striking
turn from Irish actress Alison Oliver in her feature debut) and his
gay, mixed-race cousin Farleigh (a delightfully villainous
Archie Madekwe). There's also a hanger-on in the form of Pamela (Carey Mulligan), who is two triangle-cut sandwiches short of a picnic.
When Saltburn was first announced most of us probably
expected another satire of the decadent rich, the sort of movie that would
have starred Delphine Seyrig in Pike's role if it had been made 50 years
ago. The truth is the Cattons aren't very decadent at all. Aside from having
to earn a living and being able to throw sumptuous parties on a whim,
there's little to distinguish them from the average family. During the day
they lounge around and read books. In the evenings they huddle together in
the living room and watch bad comedies on the sort of shitty and outdated TV
rich folks always seem to have (perhaps it's because those from old money
stock move through life century by century rather than day by day that makes
them so bad at keeping up with technology).
Saltburn instead takes its cues from movies like
Boudu Saved from Drowning,
The Servant
and Teorema, in which a malignant force enters the lives of some wealthy hosts and
consumes them like a vampire. We've seen Keoghan play this sort of role
before in
The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and he's just as good here. Despite lacking the looks of a Dirk Bogarde
or a Terence Stamp, he convinces as a seductive presence through how he
nails Oliver's conniving and manipulative ways. But there's also the sense
that he's out of his depth, that the Cattons are merely indulging his
fantasy of corrupting them with the intention of taking over their world. In
this sense Saltburn appears similar to David Fincher's
The Killer, which features a hitman who talks a good game but is a lot more human and
flawed than he'd like the audience to think. There's something particularly
knowing about Oliver, played by Elordi in a manner that makes us wonder if
he's really as gullible and naive as he seems. Casting one of the tallest
male movie stars in Elordi opposite one of the shortest in Keoghan adds an
extra layer, with Felix always towering over Oliver in a manner that
suggests a social dominance that will require a particularly strong axe to
fell. We're reminded that the aforementioned movies of Renoir, Losey and
Pasolini are mere fantasies, that in reality the big house always wins.
It's fascinating to watch all this play out, even if Fennell does
occasionally indulge her immature provocateur tendencies in attempting to
shock us with some business involving body fluids (at my screening I was
seated next to a pair of ladies in their seventies and they didn't seem
remotely perturbed by anything they witnessed; but they probably saw first
run screenings of Pasolini movies in their youth, so why would any of this
stir them?). In its attempts to shock in such a manner the movie comes off
as prudish and sex negative, a reminder that it's from the woman who gave us
the regressive
Promising Young Woman.
The trouble is, everything that's interesting about Saltburn, i.e. the subversion of the Servant/Teorema trope, is in our
heads rather than on screen, as the movie's final act reveals that rather
than subverting this convention it's simply repeating it. There's a point in
the movie, involving an encounter in a café, that would have made for a
perfect ending, one that leaves room for ambiguity and sends the audience
away with a debate to be had in the pub. Instead it's all wrapped up, but
not even neatly, leaving no room for us to deconstruct what we've just seen.
As reviewers desperate to find a diamond in every movie, we can often give
mediocre filmmakers too much credit. Sometimes if it tastes like chicken
it's simply because it is chicken.
