Saltburn
There was a lot of buzz about this film prior to its release. It seems to have dropped out of sight fairly quickly, however, for a film with a cool cast and even cooler director-writer in Emerald Fennell. It has also largely missed out at the start of the awards season. Both disappointments may be due to the mixed reception from critics and the film’s structural messiness that audiences seem to have picked up on.
I’ll try to highlight why this film, with so many intriguing, crowd pleasing moments, becomes, ultimately, an interesting failure. I’ll start with the plot, which in itself is not ground-breaking and harks back to several television dramas and film comedies that are part of this country’s cultural legacy – ‘Brideshead Revisited’ and ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ for starters. It would be reductive to classify this as an erotic thriller. Nevertheless, I’ll use that generic term as my guiding light when summarising the plot so as not to reveal the story’s twists and turns – some of which were predictable and rooted in character and some that had a rather ‘sleight of hand’ improbability. Remember, though, that I said this categorisation is reductive and I’ve already referred to the film’s structural messiness.
The first scene features Barry Keoghan’s character, Oliver Quick, reflecting back from the present to his time at an Oxford college in the early noughties. In a rather detached way and perhaps protesting too much, he tells us that he was never in love with Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Therefore, when we cut to the scene where stolidly lower middle class Oliver enters the gilded surroundings of his Oxford college as a new undergraduate, we think we know this film.
Oliver is clearly a sharp, intelligent young man. He has, presumably, worked hard to secure his place at this exclusive bastion of possibility, for someone like him, but which is a birthright for others; and this latter group, naturally, includes Felix. Oliver wants to get on the inside with Felix and cool kids, who also happen to be stinking rich, beautiful and totally at ease. Chance encounters provide Oliver with the opportunity to insert himself into the margins of Felix’s circle. He meets predictable hostility from some of Felix’s set for being non-U. There does, however, seem to be some connection between the two young men that is driven by more than just desperation from Oliver for an unattainable dream. Quietly, he seems to make himself indispensable to Jacob. The golden boy, on the other hand seems to have emotional gaps and an unfocused caring side – a caring side that we are signposted to believe is akin to an unimportant hobby, a hollow sincerity. At this stage, we’re left wondering about what Felix’s motives are for this friendship. This then takes on an extra dimension when he invites Oliver to his family’s grand manor house set in the bucolic splendour of the Catton Estate.
Although there is something distinctly off kilter about Oliver, this first part of the film left me wondering who was using whom in the friendship. There are hints that Felix has an annual habit of bringing an unlikely friend into his radiant orbit only to discard him or her when he eventually tires of them. Yet Oliver veers between being a socially clumsy and naïve poor relation to someone with a Machiavellian sensibility. He makes himself a confidant to the elder members of the Catton family – Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant and Carey Mulligan having great fun with the privileged caricatures they’re given – and we see him assimilating the emotional fissures that run through this dysfunctional family.
So, that’s the set-up, which takes us halfway through the film’s running time. At that point, we are left having fun with Oliver and Felix during a long hot summer, sunbathing on the Capability Brownesque terrace, with Felix’s beautifully cool and fragile sister (Alison Oliver), drinking fine wine to a period pop sound track. And we’re just waiting for something to happen.
The film has progressed, so far, as sensory overload, with dashes of social comedy. The surface allure is enriched only by the depth and ambiguity of Keoghan’s performance. He is the outsider who provides us with a way into this charmed circle whilst being resolutely unknowable. However, there are one or two scenes that hint, uncomfortably, at a darker narrative and denouement. Will Oliver’s insertion in the family mean that his obsession with Felix gets out of control, or will Felix’s attention wither and die?
Well … it didn’t quite go where I expected next and yet the playing out of the film was also not a shocking revelation. Perhaps I simply wasn’t tuned in enough to the type of film Fennell wanted to make. You see this is about a series of moments, visually arresting and emotionally discombobulating scenes. In my opinion, proper character development and a properly worked out narrative arc seem less important. It was a film to feast on whilst in the cinema but forget straight afterwards.
I hope you can see that I think there’s a lot to like about this film despite some reservations about how it hangs together. Barry Keogh is a creepily charismatic lead who has a face that allows the audience to see the cogs working in his brain. The over-privileged and self-centred Catton family seemed to be caricatures, as I’ve already indicated – although perhaps that may be my impression because I don’t move in those circles. The star-studded cast draw out the humour in their ghastly behaviour and affectations. The problem with such an approach, though, is that it is hard to feel any empathy with them when the plot seems to require some.
So, there’s my take, and because this is such a striking and, yes, messy film, you, dear moviegoer, may disagree. You could think I’ve missed the point, or succumbed to the need for genre conventions, or simply mislaid my sense of humour. Perhaps. If I am guilty of any of those things, it has still not stopped me recommending that you see this film.