I’ve just caught up with Saltburn, the Amazon Prime Original generating sudden word-of-mouth burst in early January 2024. Fair warning: There’s no way to write a review of this Barry Keoghan showcase without spoilers. If you prefer surprise to expectation, Saltburn works best if you know nothing going in.
Keoghan, the now 31-year-old Irish actor first seen by many in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017) , appears set to achieve A-list status after his Best Supporting Actor-nominated turn in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) [Read the Screenopolis review –Ed.]. Saltburn functions as a vehicle for his talents in a way similar to Ed Norton’s emergence in Primal Fear (1996); versatility is built into the role.
Keoghan plays Oliver Quick, a take on the name Oliver Twist that’s one of writer/director Emerald Fennell’s many red-herring reference points, merging the Charles Dickens novel’s sympathetic orphan with the sleight-of-hand “quickness” of its Artful Dodger character. The setting is Oxford University in 2006, with the poor, scholarship-dependent Oliver attempting to fit in among his wealthy student peers. One student in particular, Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), immediately pegs him as lower-class rabble, and doesn’t hesitate to snidely let Oliver know his insignificant place.
In an early scene with a schoolmaster, Oliver’s booksmarts are no match for Farleigh’s connections. The educator yawns at Oliver’s astute scholarship and fawns at Farleigh’s lineage. So much for academic idealism; in the enlightened 2000s it’s still not what you know, but who you know. (Also who you blow, but that’s later in the movie.)
The first 45 minutes of Saltburn are a bit of a mystery, starting with: Where’s the heated salt? Why are people saying this movie grossed them out? It seems a basic tale of unrequited gay love when Oliver forges a friendship with Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), a strapping but kind-faced student who’s very much the golden boy of the student body. Felix, a ladies’ man oblivious to Oliver’s affection, pities Oliver’s lower-class hardships and consoles Oliver when his drug-addicted father dies just prior to final exams.
That’s when we learn that Saltburn is the name of the English mansion Felix’s old-money family owns, as he invites Oliver to spend the summer there. The film’s collegiate tone takes a turn for tense black comedy when we meet patriarch Sir James Catton (the finely composed Richard E. Grant) and Lady Elspeth Catton (Rosamund Pike), who welcome Oliver with faux-warmth alongside Felix’s sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) and the resentfully suspicious Farleigh, who turns out to be Felix’s cousin.
Also at the house is “Poor Dear” Pamela, another pitied friend (of the mother, Elspeth), played by Carey Mulligan, who starred in writer/director Emerald Fennell’s previous film, the well-received Promising Young Woman (2020). That film pulled no punches, sometimes without clear reason other than to revel in the pain of the punch, and Saltburn turns out to be no different.
Though at first Oliver seems out of his depth, a hapless innocent toyed with by carelessly powerful benefactors, there’s a Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) element at play as genre counterpoint. Oliver, who often knows more than his hosts (such as the difference between the scandals of Percy Bysse Shelley and Lord Byron), also is a quick study at manipulating his manipulators, or at least attempting to. He sees what others miss, including the furtive Venetia’s bulimia, and uses that perceptiveness to disarm.
From here, director Fennell might have turned Oliver into a working-class hero, a regular guy who cracks through the uppercrust to beat them at their own game. She has something nastier in mind for Oliver, sidestepping Frank Capra upstart in favor of a dextrously ambisexual Frank-N-Furter. That includes multiple late-night, Dangerous Liasons-style seductions with bonus bodily fluids, and a certain vampiric approach to a menstruating partner that made me thankful for the cinematographer Linus Sandgren’s use of dim lighting. (It must be said that, audience gross-out litmus testing aside, Saltburn is a lushly good-looking movie.)
In this game of Oliver Versus the Aristocrats, Saltburn keeps the scales tilting as to whether the main character is dirty-bathwater repellent or worth rooting for. So too are the Cattons not wholly rotten: Rosamund Pike’s character seems less catty than class-insulated, and Jacob Elordi’s Felix has a good-hearted-but-simple Ashton Kutcher quality that registers genuine hurt when, in a scene reminiscent of 2003’s Shattered Glass, he drives Oliver to his parents’ house to find out the truth about his upbringing.
Barry Keoghan is magnificent throughout, with a face that’s one part Graduate-era Dustin Hoffman, one part gaze-holding Richard Gere, and at least one part androgynous Egyptian cat. For stretches of the film Keoghan seems guileless, and then suddenly and thrillingly, he takes control. By film’s end you may feel you’ve experienced his range a bit too well.
The final act of Saltburn portrays its characters metaphorically not as wolves or underdogs, but closer to insects (in one character’s view, moths) or even necrophiliac worms. It’s a class-warfare morality tale driven by amorality. When the closing scene explained previous events, I wanted more of a Rosetta Stone key to justify character motives and give the film deeper meaning beyond its emergent formula. But Saltburn mainly just wants to stir its overspiced pot and scorch your tongue. It arrives at the party dressed as artful drama, then strips down to high camp.
