Saltburn
Synopsis: A poor outsider gets taken in by a popular student at Oxford. A strange and dangerous summer ensues. (Streaming on Amazon as of January 2024)
We don’t really need another movie to tell us what we already know: the English aristocracy are a dotty and decadent bunch. Maybe they’re not so different from everybody else, but they do have the money to get away with their behavior. And in stylish fashion. Saltburn has nothing new to say on class issues, but it is a good excuse to eavesdrop on the rich and randy at a stunning estate, Saltburn.
Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is a scholarship student- Class of 2016- at Oxford. He’s poor and seems alone in the world. It’s the first week of the new term and Oliver is looking for a seat in the crowded dining hall. It seems all the public school students have already coalesced into little cliques. He finds a seat at what is clearly an outsiders’ table. An abrasive student socially forces himself on Oliver. He casts an eye around the room to where a boisterous group, with the easy confidence of the privileged, are hanging off of each other. Be still our collective hearts. Here’s Jacob Elordi as Felix Cattan, tall and impossibly handsome like Caravaggio’s Narcissus.
When Oliver isn’t being taunted by toffs, he gravitates to Felix. Lo and behold, one day Oliver is biking through campus when he comes upon a stranded Felix. Oliver stops where Felix is fumbling to fix a bike tire. “I’ll be late for class again,” laments Felix. “Well,” says Ollie “you could take my bike & return it later.” We can tell that Felix is not one to turn down what are surely the many favors that his looks and status welcome. At least Felix tosses off a thank you to Oliver before he speeds off.
Oxford social life doesn’t get any easier for Oliver. In a tutorial, a ruthlessly snobbish student, Farleigh (Archie Madekwe) ridicules him. And even though Oliver has been doing the studies, while the other student has clearly not, the don chuckles along because Farleigh’s mom is an Oxford legacy.
So, yeah, there is not one decent person at Oxford, according to the movie. I don’t doubt that that’s close to the truth, but still, laying it on as thick as clotted cream.
Furthermore, no revising seems to get done. Well, how can studying be undertaken when as soon as the sun goes down –off come the students’ robes — and the whole town turns into a Euphoria episode? I half expected to see Zendaya at one of the pubs. Britain’s future leaders excel in drinking, drugging, sexing and –in a nice British touch — laughing about the have-nots.
But beautiful, popular Felix actually seems like he might be kind of… nice? He strikes up a convo with Oliver after the bike incident and learns that Oliver the scholarship student is not only poor, but his parents are on & off drugs. Felix, does him a solid and waves Oliver over if he sees him out at a pub on his own. They get to know each other well enough that Felix invites Oliver to his home for the summer. Oliver, eager to avoid weeks of dismal homelife, accepts. Since Felix is an aristo, his parents’ place has a name: Saltburn. And that is where the action really begins…
Saltburn is a magnificent estate. The house is seemingly several square miles and the vast grounds include acres of lawn, a hedge maze, tennis courts and a pool. Lots of places to laze around.
Unfortunately, one of the people at the estate for the duration is Farleigh, who is Felix’ cousin. Poor cousin it turns out; he regularly goes to Sir James aka Sir Saltburn (Richard E. Grant) with his hand out, guilting him about his and his mummy’s destitution. He seems almost glad that Oliver is at Saltburn, now he doesn’t have to pause his sport of ridiculing non-aristos.
Lady Saltburn aka Elspeth is a charismatic Rosamund Pike in a complex performance, at turns brittle and soft. When she and Jacob Elordi are on screen together, it’s hard to decide whom to gape at. Completing the group of leisure-makers is Venetia (Alison Oliver), Felix’ pretty sister. They’re all terribly louche. And Oliver wants in.
Days are spent taking advantage of the scant English sun. Besides lounging by the pool, they lounge in a cultivated field. When Oliver is the last to join the naked sunbathers, he tentatively doffs his shorts and hello! Now everyone, even hateful Farleigh, are intrigued. Seems the scholarship bloke is well-hung.
Oliver begins a project of f***ing his way through Saltburn. One night, from his bedroom window, he sees Venetia on the lawn, gazing at the stars. He tromps out, acting his unsure self, but within a few minutes he and Venetia are snogging. When he makes a move to go further, she warns him off, saying she has her period. She’s delighted when he whispers: I’m a vampire. Whoa! Sounds like a Brit Pop song title. Anyway… cunnilingus ensues.
Oliver is in dangerous territory now. Felix won’t be wanting the man they all see as a charity case sexing his sibling. Even Venetia has snarked to Oliver that he’s but one of he brother’s toys. “I like you better than last summer’s.”
When sneaky Farleigh reveals he’s seen the sex encounter, Oliver gets all dominatrix-y. He starts uses sex to push him around. When Lady Saltburn frets over Venetia’s bulimia, he uses the same approach with her. Insisting she eat (and keep down) croissants at brekkie if she wants to keep bedding with him. What a startling –and unbelievable– transformation Oliver’s made. Where did he get these mad sex skills? No one gave him a second look at Oxford. Maybe he watched Youtube vids or pulled up wikiHow. Maybe Saltburn itself is giving him juju?
We used to feel sorry for Oliver, but he’s becoming Machiavellian as the summer strides along. He seems to sense a neediness in the breezy Lady Saltburn. Felix had warned Oliver early on that his mother has a facial hair phobia, so don’t forget to excise any stubble. Oliver zeroes in on her, insinuating that her friends –like an in-recovery woman, Pam (Carey Mulligan, also cast in writer-director Emerald Fennell’s superior film, Promising Young Woman) out-stayed her welcome and hospitality. Oliver doesn’t want to be in that category. He tells Lady Saltburn, a former model, that she’s beautiful. Something we reckon Sir Saltburn doesn’t find the time to tell her.
And what of Felix — beautiful, upstanding Felix? Is Oliver obsessed with him? Well, consider this… Oliver and Felix share a huge bathroom that contains a soaking tub, center stage. Oliver likes to sneak and peek around. Stealthily looking into the bathroom through an ajar door, he spies Felix masturbating in the tub’s steamy water. Head thrown back, eyes closed, face dewy…
Okay, so consider that Barry Keoghan is quite good at playing creepy, usually dimwit guys. Don’t let the fact that his Oliver is smart fool you. He’s a creep in this movie too. Not convinced? Well… After Felix’ self-sex comes to a climax, and he exits the tub & back to his room…Oliver creeps (of course) into the bathroom and gazes –no, leers– into the tub as the bathwater courses down the drain. He climbs in and slurps the semen-laced water. Eww. Such an odd kink; but what was beyond was that he was licking the G-damned drain! Barf!
I was pretty repulsed by this time, what with Oliver’s manipulations and drain-licking, but I soldiered on because I wanted to know Oliver’s end-game. Could he get any worse? I think you know the answer.
Lady Saltburn is planning a big fancy-dress/ costume party. The champagne will flow and the music will blare all night. Most of the guests will be uni-aged, but some of the older generation is there too. Gird your loins because some older guy karaokes Flo Rida’s “Low” (the apple bottom jeans & the boots with the fur).
We’ll see Felix in extravagant angel wings and Oliver adorned with antlers. Darkness abounds. All sorts of depravity and danger.
Sounds exciting? No. The movie lacks ideas, so the satire wasn’t biting. And it was gross. And the cruelty is so cringey.
But I did like Saltburn’s use of Zadok the Priest; you know, the piece they blare in films whenever a Bristish sovereign is being crowned. It was, however, criminal that they only played a byte of The Killers’ Mr. Brightside. No better song to get the energy up again after a party’s gotten a bit sloppy. And…
Barry Keoghan was so good/so bad, that I’d be scared if I met him. Rosamund or Jacob “I hated being in The Kissing Booth movies” Elordi? Who wouldn’t want to meet them?! But don’t get obsessed. You don’t want to be a stan…or an Oliver Quick.
P.S. TRIGGER WARNING— a bloody suicide… or murder???
P.P.S. I don’t think the movie is worth the time, so if you’ll be skipping it, read on & I’ll tell you the ending….. Turns out, Oliver is a complete psychopath. He’s –no surprise– a liar too. And what’s worse than being poor in England? Being middle class, of course. His parents, whom he’s cut himself off from, are totally normcore average income earners. He basically kills off the whole Saltburn/Catton family so that he can eventually get Saltburn. And he gets away with it! He also gets away with stripping off at Felix’ grave (he poisoned him) and f***ing the dirt! Then, in a final touch of weirdness, after he inherits Saltburn, he dances naked around the mansion. Wtf?
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