The greatest thing about Saltburn is that we are still talking about Saltburn. Emerald Fennell’s sophomore film was released back in November 2023 in the UK but really hit paydirt when it streamed on Amazon Prime over the Christmas break. Saltburn is a film that flaunts its controversies like the gauche conspicuous consumers its upper-class characters secretly despise. This is a malevolent marketing tool, skewering fragile family relationships already tested to their limit from being forced together for festive frivolity, so how will granny react when the bodily liquids flow freely, smeared across faces and torsos?
Saltburn, set in 2006, follows the travails of Oliver Quick, an eager Oxbridge fresher from Merseyside resplendent in scarf and blazer, an eager beaver who has devoured the entire summer reading list, is early to lectures, and earnest in his belief that being at Oxford is the key to unlocking the Great British class divide and the fortunes and success they hoard away from the other 99% of the country. That belief is brutally shot to pieces when he encounters Felix Canton, a shimmering Adonis from a titled family for whom Oxford is an expected rite of passage in the same way Oliver was given a place at his local secondary school.
Played by Barry Keoghan, Oliver has a Charles Bronson intensity infused with Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler’s sense of wonder. Oliver is transfixed. Felix is like a sun king sucking everything and everyone into his golden orbit, an affable giant scooping up sexual encounters and friendships alike with the inherent confidence money and entitlement afford. Oliver’s impossible dream of an exclusive, even playing field at Oxford are further eschewed during a tutorial with Felix’s cousin, Farleigh, where Professor Ware declares his long-distance infatuation with Farleigh’s mother. Ware even agrees with Farleigh when he criticises Oliver for using “thus” in his essay, Oliver is incredulous, “You’re picking apart the style of my essay rather than the substance?”
And why wouldn’t he? If recent history has taught us anything, it’s to look at the charlatans at the seat of power in the Conservative Party for the last thirteen years, all style over substance, the myth of the English sense of fair play forged from that warped, teary-eyed vision of Empire and Nationalism called Brexit. Yet Felix, although cruel, dismissive, and condescending also has a heart and when tragedy befalls Oliver’s family, Felix is genuinely compassionate and offers for Oliver to stay for the summer at his home, the titular Saltburn.
Fennell’s film is shot in what can only be described as Halcyonvision, glorious and confident hues that cascade from the screen. The summer is endless, you can smell the heat and decadence, the wood, and the grass, we’re still in that sweet spot before smoking bans and the ubiquity of smart phones robbed us of our capacity to converse, cruelly or otherwise, soundtracked to new rave and the art-rock revival. Licensing laws have been relaxed, heralding the age of the after, after party strewn with trash fashion and cheap drugs, and the threat of austerity is still far off in the distance (and never in sight for Felix). Even the twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are becoming a distant memory for most and an inconvenient truth for others.
Saltburn itself is magnificent, a towering pile full of history, art, and privilege. At first, all Oliver can utter is, “Wow”, his head craned upward, dwarfed by the physical and metaphorical expanse between the Cantons and the rest of the country. To Felix, Saltburn is his home, he knows no different, his bare feet padding comfortably and his Livestrong bracelet dangling effortlessly, a friendly lion downplaying his den to make his friend less intimidated. It’s not his fault he’s born into this advantage, and Felix would be easier to hate if he was reprehensible. Fennell herself is from the moneyed classes and the Canton family, although detached from the reality of the masses, are not so detached from their humanity and good manners when welcoming a stranger to their home. Little does Felix or his family know what horrific fates their good deeds will lead to.
Oliver is not all he seems. To the Canton family, Sir James, his former model wife Lady Elspeth and their marginalised daughter Venetia, he is a curiosity to be examined, adored, and discarded. To Farleigh, whose position in the family is less assured, he represents a direct threat to his ability to access the privilege of Saltburn. Oliver is far more than the Harry Potter clone we first saw at Oxford, more perverse like Sting in Brimstone & Treacle, sexually confident with his night-time encounters with Farleigh and Venetia. Farleigh warns him off, “This place is not for you. It is a fucking dream; it is an anecdote you will bore your fat kids with at Christmas. You’ll cling to it, and comb over it, and jerk off to it and you’ll wonder how you could ever, ever, ever, get it back… but you don’t get it back because your summer is over.”
What has infuriated and intoxicated the online film community and critics alike is Saltburn’s mixed messaging over class. It is easy to dismiss Saltburn as another entrée into the burgeoning eat-the-rich sub-genre that has proliferated over the last few years, but Saltburn is not really concerned with social (or lack of) mobility, rather the complicated politics of class identity. Why do some very rich people downplay their wealth and privilege, why would the middle class pretend to come from an impoverished background, why do some successful people from the working class retain their dying accents as a badge of honour?
Fennel’s own privileged background is contentious for some as the Cantons are ultimately painted as victims from the predatory instincts of a lower-caste usurper like Oliver. Is she showing disdain for the middle class who, unlike the working and upper classes, are depicted as culturally null and void. In the film’s outrageous coda, Oliver is stripped naked, whirling around the empty halls of Saltburn triumphantly to Sophie Ellis Bexter’s Murder on the Dancefloor. Oliver has eradicated the upper classes from their space, but what happens when their traditions are gone? Perversely, aren’t their ancient customs what attract people like Oliver in the first place? Without the physical link to the people, palaces and stately homes like Saltburn just become more vacuous spaces divorced from history? But if that’s the case, what about the Palace of Versailles?
Ultimately Saltburn poses many more questions than it answers, but isn’t that the joy of contentious art? That, and watching a great actor like Barry Keoghan slurp semen-tainted bathwater from around the plughole.