HOUSE OF INDULGENCE
EMERALD FENNELL’S SALTBURN (2023)
Director Emerald Fennell and a capable cast get their hands dirty toying with tropes in her indulgent second feature.
I once asked one of the best independent filmmakers I know about money, and what having a bigger budget really comes down to in filmmaking. His answer was as elegant as a screenwriter’s: “lighting and lenses.” In Hollywood, it often means more than that – bigger stars, more elaborate sets, better visual effects. But lighting and lenses determine what you see and how you see it, one of the simple, profound truths about this artform.
Life is the same way. You move through life like a DP (Director of Photography), and your life experiences give you new and different and more interesting lenses as you go along. What you viewed as merciless, capitalist corporations in your 20s begin to also reveal themselves as crucial pillars of society, providing structure, stability and community. What you viewed as horrible personal mistakes become life touchstones, and teachers, delivering knowledge that shapes your future self. These lenses enable us to see the vastness and complexity of human life a little differently, and you can never have too many.
If you’ve ever been poor, that’s a lens too, and one that never leaves your set of gear. So when a rich friend asks a poor friend (who is crushing on the rich friend) to join him at his 13th century country estate for the summer, he says yes. And things go how you think, until – they don’t. Something new is introduced, and you start to ask – what exactly is going on here?
This question is at the heart of Saltburn, Emerald Fennell’s second and even more buzzworthy feature (following 2020’s Promising Young Woman). Before going, I lamented the expectation that it was simply a period-specific “eat the rich” story about crazy, selfish rich people, of which there are droves.
At first, that’s how it plays. The film centers around the Catton family, owners of the vast estate of the film’s title (filmed at Drayton House, and rarely featured in film), brimming with generational wealth and the attendant disconnection from the “real” world. A fun and chatty Rosamund Pike plays the matriarch of sorts, oblivious to how regular people live (at one point, she asks, “Darling, where’s Liverpool?”). Richard E. Grant, replete with light-socket-hair, plays the father, and is even more a caricature (but no less delightful). Carey Mulligan plays a kooky family friend, stealing each tiny scene the script gives her. Allison Oliver plays the beautiful but prickly and depressive sister of the main attraction, and the family Adonis, Felix (Jacob Elordi), college mate to our star, Oliver, played by the young but inimitable Barry Koeghan. Despite Felix’s privilege, he is not a bad guy. In fact, he’s empathetic, inclusive, aware of his privilege, and is the film’s moral center, living life without the cynicism of the other members of the family. This also includes the is-he-or-isn’t-he-good-blood and biracial cousin, played wonderfully by Archie Madekwe.
Oliver and Felix meet at Oxford, in a fairly standard rags to riches pairing: Oliver is a scholarship kid, and Felix is old money. For the first act, we rarely stray from the tropes of poor kid / rich kid friendship dynamics. Oliver meets a behaviorally challenged fellow nerd named Jake, and actor Will Gibson brings him to quirky and hilarious life, with one-liners like “vampy cunts” (has there been a better take down?), before he becomes a casualty of Oliver’s social engineering.
Ms. Fennell’s credits are substantial as an actress and a writer (before Promising Young Woman, she wrote for Killing Eve), and her directing shows a strong deference to both of these arts. And as far as wealth, she’s working with a lot of it where talent is concerned. She has Barry Keoghan’s pallorous stare from The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), plus his charm from The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). Rosamund Pike’s manic intensity from Gone Girl (2014). Richard E. Grant’s crackling-fire energy from – everything he’s done since the 80s when he started acting, but more recently his brilliance from Can You Ever Forgive Me (2018). Jacob Elordi’s seductive presence from Euphoria (2019-). And a number of newcomers who will be a pleasure to watch in years to come.
What Emerald Fennell does well here, as she did in Promising Young Woman, is world building and wait making. About half an hour in, I started to think, “what are we waiting for?” And then she delivered. The most talked about scene, involving Oliver and Venetia, plays elegantly like its own three act play: shock, complicity, lust. Please, Ms. Fennell, may we have some more?
I settled into my seat. This is the movie I came to see. I loved the ending of Alex Garland’s Men (2022), as we see Rory Kinnear metamorphose right before our eyes; the baby scene in Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015); the “love machine” scene with Juliette Binoche in Claire Denis’ High Life (2018). But we don’t get that movie. What’s really happening in Saltburn is that it contains few different movies within it, each of which I believe would have been stronger pieces if pursued on their own. Here are a few lenses, to start:
A queer relationship story of a bisexual / pansexual man coming of age in a late 2000s world that is quickly becoming more inclusive and possible
An arts, culture and class story of a savant with a deep love of literature and history, harkening back to great English dramas
A “body horror” story of how we engage in what is perceived as depravity, but might just be very basic, natural and underreported curiosities that make us feel alive, and are completely harmless
Instead, Saltburn is Fennell’s entry into an established canon. The most obvious critique is that the film is a simple mashup of The Servant (1963) The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), and Brideshead Revisited (2008) with a few twists. Her new film is hugely referential; she has said so in interviews. So what? So those are great films. They work. We rewatch them. (Queer people definitely rewatch them.) And, with the exception of Patricia Highsmith (author of the Ripley novels), they are English. As is Fennell. She has experience with aristocracy, and she is knowingly participating in narratives that came before her. Let’s let her. There is enough that is new and different in Saltburn to earn its place. How audiences watch it will depend on their lenses.
Another important element this film shares with those it exalts is a mysterious, or sinister, or depraved bisexual protagonist (or antagonist – pick your poison). Writing on the subject includes Devon Price’s essay on the Depraved Bisexual trope in Medium (2015), and Spencer Kornhaber’s about the “evil bisexual” trope in The Atlantic (2015). Today, cancel culture rules – but it shares the throne with call out culture. So I could easily sit here and call out this trope of the evil bisexual. “We’re not all evil! This is unfair representation,” I could say. But where’s the fun in that? Let’s sit with it and understand why it works so well in narratives. Patricica Highsmith is wonderful to read. The Servant is great to watch. Brideshead is a dream to both read and watch (except the Catholic stuff – snooze).
These men – are they devious because they are bisexual? No. Does their sexuality, like a membership to more than one club, inspire and facilitate deviousness? Because we are essentially a sexual class that has access (even if limited) to two polar and opposing cultures, does that belie an intrinsic duplicity? Is our DNA reflective of duality when it comes to both sexuality and morality? Are both entirely discrete? And does it matter? Morality and the rule of law will always trump sexuality. If I poison someone, it doesn’t matter whether I am bisexual or straight or lesiban or any sexual designation. I’m going to jail. But are these impulses connected?
Most would say no. Not all biological traits dictate behavior. But it works in storytelling, and tickles that place we keep hidden – where not all of our thoughts are good. We just tend not to talk about it.
Saltburn doesn’t bother much with this question… in part because it takes place recently enough that young people would conceivably have been less concerned with sexuality. But also because there is a lot more going on with Koeghan’s Oliver, and even though what happens is a bit ridiculous, it’s fun to watch. It indulges a mischievous, indulgent, probably-better-if-you-didn’t instinct we all have within us. Not all of our desires are “good.” What happens when we indulge them?
And what happens when a director does? What is gained in entertainment, hands-dirtying and eyebrow raising is lost in clarity, focus and even realism. Most eyes will roll at the ending, but the patient, steady central performance by Barry Koeghan is a taste of the great films he’ll give us in the future. And I look forward to the lights and lenses Emerald Fennell will use next.