Saltburn: A Cold, Hard Sleep-Over with a Rich, Dysfunctional Family

By Karen Gordon

Rating: B-minus

Writer/director Emerald Fennell is a force to be reckoned with. Drawn to satire with a dark edge, she’s already proven, with her first film Promising Young Woman, that she has an incisive intellect, a keen eye for social hypocrisies, and is not afraid to rattle and provoke.
She won the screenwriting Oscar for Promsing Young Woman, a commentary about rape culture, sexism and denial that hit the target so precisely that it was either lauded or reviled.

I’m on the laudatory end. The movie hit on attitudes towards women by both men and women, that were both subtle and chillingly on target. 

Barry Keoghan plays a student of limited means who spends summer with an odd, rich family.

For her second film, the ultimately disappointing Saltburn, she turns her gaze to a range of issues around social status - who has it, who wants it and the corrosiveness of it all. Like Promising Young Woman, Saltburn is a beautifully character-driven dramatic satire that looks at everyone with a precise and chilly eye. Unfortunately, all that is eventually undercut by tonal problems and the film’s inherent coldness.. 
The brilliant Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin) stars as the modest, soft spoken Oliver Quick, a student, from a financially poor background, who has worked his way into the prestigious Oxford University. 
His financial status means he has no friends, or connections amongst the students, and so is initially uncomfortably ostracized.  That is, until he makes friends with fellow student Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), a very popular, very handsome, aristocrat.  

Oliver does Felix a kindness. Felix likes both kindness and Oliver’s low key manner, and the two become friends. In effect, Felix takes Oliver under his wing, elevating his acceptance and status.
When summer break comes.  Oliver has no place to go. His father died during term. His mother, he explains, is a black-out abusive drunk likely living in a hovel, and he would do anything to avoid spending time with her. Felix invites Oliver home for the summer, to the family’s estate, a monument to generations of wealth and privilege called Saltburn. 
On night one, Oliver meets the family hanging out in a smallish room, watching TV together.  Felix’s parents Elspeth and Sir James, played by, respectively, Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant, welcome Oliver as if he was destined to be a family member.   

Also present are Poor Dear Pamela, (Carey Mulligan) an old friend of Elspeth, who, as her name suggests is a bit of a mess, and Felix’s pretty, but slightly odd sister Venetia, (Alison Oliver) who seems to have decided to be sexually drawn to Oliver. 
They seem a bit more Addams family than nobility. Elspeth is detached, snobby and weirdly dark. Sir James is, well, detached and snobby. There’s an empathy deficit. But they also, initially, are welcoming and even warm to Oliver, who is (at least on the surface) well-mannered, balanced. 
As always, it’s what’s under the surface that matters.  And that begins to change as the movie moves along and begins to twist and turn. And here is where the movie starts to have problems, arguably, both with the story, and in terms of tone.  

As a certain character changes, and reveals their disturbing side, their behavior seems unmotivated by what we’ve seen so far.  And so, the final act feels more like it’s going through the motions to get us to the conclusion. The film lacks the emotional bite that this kind of noir-ish satire needs. The movie's message is muddled or lost.
But still, there is a lot going on.  Fennell has style, an ear for dialogue and a strong eye as a director. All of the elements are well thought through: the location, the art direction, etc. 

She knows how to write character and isn't afraid to make them confused, or unflattering.  
She avoids romanticizing any of her characters, and doesn’t let any of them off the hook. Even ones who are, by virtue of their status and detached from the reality that the rest of us experience, behave in ways that seem thoughtlessly true to them.

But this isn’t a deep psychological dive into normal versus psychopathy. Fennell is looking at the glossy surface of social climbing, status, the empathy gap, and in the end, the things this distorts..
Saltburn, written and directed by Emerald Fennell, Starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Carey Mulligan. Opens in theatres Wednesday, November 22.