Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Archie Madekwe, Richard E. Grant, Paul Rhys, Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan
Intro:
It is pop art perversion. It is edgelord elegance.
After making her audacious directorial debut with Promising Young Woman, reappraising the exploitation staple of rape and revenge films in the process, Emerald Fennell’s sophomore feature finds her embracing another sub-genre that tends to get left by the wayside in the modern day, the erotic thriller.
With DP Linus Sandgren again going for broke in bringing prestige filth to the screen a la Babylon (whose co-star, Margot Robbie, also serves as producer here), Fennell refines her realisation of the female gaze on-film to tell the story of middle-class Oxford student Oliver (Barry Keoghan), his growing infatuation with well-off classmate Felix (Jacob Elordi), and a summer spent at Felix’s family estate.
Not only does the film have sexual energy to burn, with Elordi making up for all three Kissing Booth films in one fell swoop, it manages to avoid the Head/Other Head dilemma that ends up sinking a lot of competitors within this genre. Turns out that blood can flow in both directions at once.
Saltburn takes aim at class divides, much as Promising Young Woman went after gender, and with equal lack of subtlety. There’s shakiness in the framing, which leans into unfortunate Downton Abbey-esque lopsidedness at times, but still maintains an emphatically voyeuristic perspective throughout.
Through the window of the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, to the varying obscene extremes amongst the titular estate’s residents (Richard E. Grant as a child in an adult aristocrat’s body, Rosamund Pike as the cold-hearted avatar of Janus, Paul Rhys as the quietly judging butler), and Oliver serving as the horny answer to Nick Carraway (okay, horny-er answer), it sets up the divide with the right framing to make it work. It shows the uber-wealthy as rather disgusting creatures… and then questions what kind of creature would want to be like them.
Saltburn also has the kind of regal-framed bleak comedy comparable to The Favourite. Hell, more so than anything to do with thrills or commentary, this film shines brightest when it’s being balls-to-the-wall batshit. Camp reigns, creating many a mindfrag moment where shocking and genuinely depressing events are tempered with a hysterical energy that can simultaneously render an audience belligerent with laughter and breathless with melancholy.
Part of that comes from the deranged yet finely balanced tone throughout, but there’s also the sheer breadth of inspiration that bleeds through the imagery. Romeo + Juliet meets Belle Delphine. Cruel Intentions meets Braindead. Teorema meets The Room. All wrapped up in some Point Grey-tier ingenuity in its use of 2000s pop music, doing for Sophie Ellis-Bextor what Promising Young Woman did for Britney Spears.
Saltburn is one of the hardest swings of the year, and even its shaky stance isn’t enough to detract from the sheer impact with which it hits. It is pop art perversion. It is edgelord elegance. It is Grand Guignol that is likely to turn some away with the force of a wind tunnel, but is sure to find a loving home amongst (and this is meant as endearingly as can be considered) the true freaks out there.
