Saltburn

Director: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Medekwe, Carey Mulligan, Paul Rhys, Ewan Michell, Sadie Soverall, Dorothy Atkinson, Shaun Dooley
Running Time: 131 min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★) 

Emerald Fennell's Saltburn is one of those "blank check" movies where a studio is so bowled over by a director's early success that they've granted them the keys to the kingdom for a follow-up. It's a creative luxury many have used to make their ambitious dream projects that wouldn't usually see the light of day, polarizing critics and audiences alike. Now after 2020's Promising Young Woman, Fennel gets her shot, but deservedly so, since the last thing we need is for big swings like this to disappear as artists are shackled and second guessed.

With a script more interested in obsession than social commentary, its "eat the rich" tale combines elements of The Talented Mr. Ripley, A Clockwork Orange, Brideshead Revisited, and more unfortunately, the fourth season of Netflix's You. Intentionally lacking in depth, viewer enjoyment mostly depends on whether you feel the disgusting shocks are justified by a pitch black satire that starts promisingly enough before flying off the rails. Multiple bodily fluids are ingested and exchanged, as it bombastically hurls toward its destination, making for one of the weirder cases of style over substance.

It's 2006 and scholarship student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is starting his freshman year at Oxford University, awkwardly attempting to fit in before befriending wealthy and charismatic upperclassman Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Sympathetic to his troubled upbringing, the popular Felix takes Oliver under his wing, accepting him into his circle of friends. Reeling from the news of his father's sudden death, Oliver accepts Felix's invitation to stay the summer at the Catton family's Saltburn estate to relax. While there, he meets Felix's eccentric parents Sir James (Richard E. Grant) and Lady Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), his unpredictable sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) and Elspeth's frequent houseguest Pamela (Carey Mulligan). 

Also joining them is Felix's cousin and Oliver's Oxford nemesis Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), a longtime fixture at the mansion who's becoming increasingly skeptical of the new guest's intentions. But Elspeth takes an immediate liking to Oliver, as he's quickly intoxicated by this opulent lifestyle surrounding him. Feeling truly accepted for the first time, his fascination with Felix escalates, along with the Catton family's bizarre behavior. The question isn't when Oliver will leave Saltburn, but whether he can, or even wants to.

You can sense Oliver's fortunes transform overnight after Felix's endorsement, almost immediately establishing him as popular by association. Felix casts such a spell over everyone that just being in his orbit gives Oliver a respectability he couldn't ever achieve on his own. The film's at its best when exploring this massive power imbalance that informs the essence of their parasitic friendship. And the two actors play those notes to perfection, with Keoghan's nerdy, withdrawn, deer in headlights protagonist thirsting for validation, even as we brace ourselves for the possibility he's being used. 

If Keoghan excels as this desperately awkward outsider, Elordi radiates an effortless cool factor that helps explain why so many are high on his potential as a major screen star. His performance remains remarkably consistent when the screenplay zigs and zags, subverting expectations of what was originally assumed about both characters. But once the action shifts to Saltburn and Felix's dysfunctional family enters the equation, the story heads into more polarizing territory.

Nothing that unfolds is particularly "offensive," just skeevy and gross, which could be the purpose. Even while inconsistently straddling the line between dark comedy and thriller, the production design of this intimidating estate (complete with a Shining-like hedge maze) is a sight to behold. Gorgeously lensed with some really impressive tracking shots, sets and costuming, it's nearly impossible to criticize on a technical level. The supporting performances from Grant, Oliver and Madekwe also make their marks, but it's Pike's deliciously droll Elspeth that leaves the largest. And Carey Mulligan is unrecognizable in her hilariously credited "Poor Dear" Pamela cameo, looking like she just escaped the set of a Pieces of April sequel.  

The real danger isn't this family or the estate itself, but what it represents for Oliver, whose compulsions know no bounds. And within these walls Felix is sent crashing back down to earth, the charming aristocrat he portrays on campus giving way to a scared, spoiled boy crying out for attention. Fennell needlessly holds viewers' hands at the end, overexplaining details that should be obvious to anyone paying attention. But the closing moments are a doozy, as the film gleefully basks in its own hedonistic excess with a final shot that wouldn't have seemed out of place in American Psycho.  

Overindulgent but never boring, there's just no telling how huge a disaster this could have been with a someone else at the helm. Leaving just enough of an impression to transcend the insanity, it's hard not to be impressed and repulsed by what Fennell does, knowing she'll come out of this a bolder filmmaker than she was going in. While way inferior to her previous effort, Saltburn's far from an atrocity, its admitted faults rarely stemming from a lack of vision.