A Film You Won’t Forget - A Review of Emerald Fennell’s ‘Saltburn’

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With golden, romantic hues of summers long gone, lush depravity, and the hidden secrets of the upper class, writer/director Emerald Fennell’s sophomore film promised a lot. I, like many others, was looking forward to seeing Jacob Elordi playing a role so dissimilar to his previous anger-driven, douchey characters Nate Jacobs in Euphoria and Noah Flynn in the Kissing Booth. However, throughout the course of the film, I was dazzled by a narrative that was very unlike what I was originally expecting, entirely based on what the trailer had led me to believe. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to its categorisation as a ‘thriller’. 

Fennell spins us the story of a summer romance and at the start of the film introduces us to Oliver Quick (played by Barry Keoghan) as he embarks on his first year at the University of Oxford (a place where many in our student body won’t admit having wanted to attend). As an audience we witness his transformation from scholarship outcast to becoming nearly joined at the hip with charming aristocrat Felix Catton (played by Jacob Elordi). Not having a place to return to for the summer, Felix invites Oliver to his house for the holidays, the namesake of the film’s title Saltburn.  

Here, the narrative starts to take a turn. We are presented with several instances where Oliver tries and fails to navigate the eccentricities of the British aristocracy – arriving early to the house instead of waiting for the driver to pick him up, not owning a pair of cufflinks, and awkwardly stumbling through a breakfast of too-runny eggs. These flounders are picked up on jibingly by Farleigh, Felix’s cousin (played by Archie Madekwe) and commented upon via a raised eyebrow by Duncan, the family butler (played by Paul Rhys), who seems almost unnervingly to be a part of the house itself. These small out-of-water moments for Oliver appear as a superficial attempt by Fennell to criticise the dissonance and wealth disparity between the British social classes. However, this is not given its full due in the film as Fennell turns her attention to the human psychology of love, desire, belonging, and the lengths one will go to fulfil their own sense of ultimate satisfaction. Whilst I enjoyed Fennell’s take on the other themes of the film, I felt somewhat dissatisfied by her decision to not follow through on the social criticism, nor to more wholly fulfill her promise to reveal the underbelly and dark decadence of the upper classes. 

Furthermore, I feel that exploring themes of class disparity through Oliver may have aided Fennell’s attempt to investigate our obsession with beauty, by giving him clearer character motivation for wanting to join Felix’s social circle, explaining the impulses of awe, admiration and intense anger that drive his shocking actions at the end of the film. Fennell displays the theme of our obsession with beauty through Oliver’s relationship with Felix, the house, and overall cinematography, but in my opinion, her approach lacks nuance. I feel that had she included more close-up, lingering, objectifying shots of certain characters, displayed extreme gross materialism, or had someone like Felix show a complete lack of morality, her desired themes would have been highlighted more through increased tension between the audience and the sheer audacities of what could have been happening on screen. Such aspects might have provided more interesting character dynamics and heightened the emotional stakes of the film.    

Nevertheless, I did enjoy the film and found it to be rather shocking when watching without any foresight of the plot. There were also well-rounded performances from its cast and I thought it was beautifully written with some excellent one-liners and a few skin-crawling moments to boot. The film allowed me to be immersed in nostalgia for a time not too long ago, bemusingly classified already as period drama.