Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
The idea of playing it safe after a big debut success (an Oscar-winning Best Original Screenplay included) does not seem to have occurred to Emerald Fennell, and Saltburn is the poisoned apple that results. The creator of Promising Young Woman moves to the milieu of British class satire, where she lets loose a sociopathic goblin—of course in this world they are all sociopathic goblins, but this one is especially determined. The concept is Brideshead Revisited re-imagined by Patricia Highsmith, which is a pretty good idea: A student arrives at Oxford, pitifully lacking in upper-crust bona fides, even if he does have the classic English literary name of Oliver Quick (played by Barry Keoghan). Obsessed with handsome, wealthy classmate Felix (Jacob Elordi), Oliver insinuates himself into Felix's world and, for a summer between terms, Felix's family estate.
This scenario could play out without murder, but that wouldn't be Saltburn. And if the film's aggressive appetite for transgression eventually begins to feel like affectation, well, there is an awful lot of good unclean fun to be had on the way. Ridiculing the aristocrats is easy pickings, but Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant are lethal in savoring Fennell's dialogue, and unexpected wrinkles delight, such as Carey Mulligan's dotty friend of the family, and Archie Madekwe's somewhat mysterious cousin/Oxford classmate, whose distrust of Oliver turns out to be well-founded. Madekwe's performance is so quick and catty, he easily pulls focus from the duller Elordi.
The story keeps spiraling down into an unhygienic drain, as Fennell pushes the shock value. In part because of the film's curious structure (we spend a lot of time at Oxford before getting to the title location and the real meat of the thing), this feels like punishment at times, and as the affronts accumulate Saltburn does get a little long. Still: There's a collection of tasty moments (with a few examples of near-uncanny magic hour photography from Linus Sandgren), and Keoghan's lead performance is a gem of control. Another notable presence is Saltburn's head manservant, played by ghostly-eyed Paul Rhys, who has very little dialogue but haunts the edges of the mansion as though registering that Oliver is doing the very things he has only dreamt of. Saltburn is layered with these filigreed details, which remain amusing even after the film gives itself over to relentless, exhausting subversion.
November 17, 2023
