I have a cool mom. But even the coolest moms are not the ideal viewing partners for a film as sexually explicit and strange as Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn.”
We entered the movie theater thinking we were about to see an edgy college tale. We left with pale faces and an uncomfortable “birds and bees” discussion on the drive home.
Coming from “Promising Young Woman” creator Emerald Fennell, “Saltburn” is a fantastical thriller about an Oxford student, Oliver (Barry Keoghan), obsessed with his classmate Felix (Jacob Elordi). When Oliver suffers a tragedy during exam season, Felix invites him to stay at his family’s estate for the summer. It is here where all lines of relationships and decency are blurred, and Oliver becomes increasingly entranced with Felix.
Thus ensues a summer of strangeness. Within the confines of the fortress-like estate, Felix’s family hosts lavish parties, deals with eccentric guests overstaying their welcome, and shows Oliver how the elite live.
Halfway through the summer, in an attempt to deepen their friendship, Felix surprises Oliver with a trip to his family home. There, the illusion of who Oliver has presented himself to be is shattered and the film takes a dark turn.
Despite the film’s tone shift, Fennell does an outstanding job of presenting each scene with equal amounts of beauty and debauchery. Guided by Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren, best known for “La La Land,” “Saltburn” is beautiful to look at.
Felix’s family adorns rooms of the estate with artifacts like a museum. Yet at the bottom of each frame, viewers see spilled alcohol, cigarette butts, and trash from past parties. The setting reflects the characters — vain, selfish people obsessed with the next cheap thrill. Oliver, although presented initially as a bystander to this way of life, soon becomes equally as despicable as the rest of the family.
Voyeurism works its way into nearly every scene. Many shots feature characters with their backs turned so that viewers are peering over their shoulders into the plot. Oliver brings the viewer along not as a typical voyeur, but as one simultaneously as entrenched and separated from the plot as the characters themselves. The audience is the “other” just as much as Oliver is.
Nothing is private and nothing is sacred in the world of “Saltburn.” Characters have sex on the lawn. People relay secrets to their subjects. Even in death, characters cannot escape the desires of their admirers. These scenes in which Fennel exploits privacy are the main points of contention for viewers. In divorcing eroticism and boundaries — whether in the form of relationships, decency, or death — Fennell succeeds at making audiences brutally uncomfortable.
Some critics argue she seeks too much to shock without giving viewers enough substance. But these graphic scenes show raw, twisted vice as it festers in the most unattractive places. The bodily fluids featured in the film symbolize the lust, greed, and delusion that runs as deep as the biological matter itself.
“Saltburn” stands out as a thrilling, artistic ode to degeneracy that seeks to tell a story without condoning it. The events may be fantastical, but the thematic concern of the corruption of beauty is as real as it has ever been. “Saltburn” is all of these things, but it is not the next selection for a family movie night.
