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| My taste of Saltburn life was at Downing College, Cambridge |
I watched Saltburn on Amazon Prime TV on 1st February 2024.
There are spoilers in this review
The start of the film feels like Brideshead Revisited revisited. Oliver Quick, a ‘scholarship boy’ at Oxford, encounters the posh set in the persons of Farleigh, a mixed race student, and Felix. He yearns to be friends with them, spying on them from afar, and, following an incident when he lends his bike to Felix, he is accepted (by Felix if not Farleigh) into their group. He is then invited to Saltburn, the stately home where Felix (as does Farleigh, as a poor relation) lives with his sister Venetia, his mother Elspeth and his father Sir James. He worms his way into their affection, particularly that of Elspeth, though Farleigh remains hostile to the end. He nearly gets sent home after Farleigh spies him having sex with Venetia; he quickly manipulates things so that Farleigh is accused of theft and sent away. The family hold a grand party for Oliver’s birthday but on that day Felix takes him to visit his mother and discovers all the lies that Oliver has told about his family. Faced with disgrace, the film suddenly turns very dark.
It is a magnificent portrayal of an outsider and the love-hate relationship that he has with those on the inside. The scenes at Oxford are sometimes toe-curling. The family are mostly welcoming but there is a very definite feel that they view Oliver as a charity case, a bit like ‘Eddie’, the visitor they had last summer.
Is it a commentary about wealth and privilege in Britain today? The family is utterly complacent and ignorant of the conditions in which ‘real’ people live: Felix has no idea of the names of the footmen. The film shows the dirt and litter following the party (with 200 guests!) that the family throw for Oliver’s birthday. The servants clean up. At the end, Oliver characterises the family as having no natural predators, although that isn’t quite true. The trouble is that the film itself feels too shallow to be considered as a critique of contemporary social conditions. It is, in the end, a thriller, though it takes a long time to get to that point.
The dialogue and acting were superb. There is a great deal of comedy mined from the stiff upper lips of the aristocracy and their servants: even when tragedy strikes, life must continue along its traditional lines. But these are posh people and their bodies are intended to give them pleasure: Venetia has been promiscuous since fourteen and Elspeth had a lesbian phase but gave it up because it was too wet. Perhaps that is the difference between the classes: for most of us, our bodies are tools by which we earn our bread, organs of pleasure only when they are not too fatigued.
There are some memorable moments. Having spied on Felix masturbating in the bath, Oliver licks and slurps the water as it drains away. When Oliver is having sex with Venetia she is on her period, he tells her he is a vampire and licks the blood from his fingers. He has sex with the newly dug earth over Felix’s grave. Finally, he dances naked (penis flapping) through the empty mansion. The Guardian calls these “self-satisfied provocations for an increasingly puritanical moviegoing public”.
In the end, I felt disappointed, perhaps cheated. It is Brideshead Revisited, revisited, mashed up with The Talented Mr Ripley, with the addition of titillation. There is a great deal of focus on the visuals and what the Guardian (3/5 stars) calls “aristocratic daffiness” and there is a lot of concentration on the sex and seduction (the camera worships the sweaty, lean, muscular body of Felix whereas the sex-life of lower-class Oliver has a mucky, slightly nauseous feel). But the plot? Not only is the key action crammed into the last quarter of the film, which has a very different vibe from the rest of it, but are we seriously expected to believe that Oliver gets away with it? Somehow I felt a bit cheated. The undeniable style papered over the cracks (is that itself a metaphor for the aristocracy?) and the sex scenes were manipulative. And the twist at the end, when we were shown alternative views of what happened, meant to change our perspective, seemed a little like the moment in a horror film when you see the monster and realise that it is an actor with prosthetics: it rather punctured the balloon.
Cast
It is a magnificent portrayal of an outsider and the love-hate relationship that he has with those on the inside. The scenes at Oxford are sometimes toe-curling. The family are mostly welcoming but there is a very definite feel that they view Oliver as a charity case, a bit like ‘Eddie’, the visitor they had last summer.
Is it a commentary about wealth and privilege in Britain today? The family is utterly complacent and ignorant of the conditions in which ‘real’ people live: Felix has no idea of the names of the footmen. The film shows the dirt and litter following the party (with 200 guests!) that the family throw for Oliver’s birthday. The servants clean up. At the end, Oliver characterises the family as having no natural predators, although that isn’t quite true. The trouble is that the film itself feels too shallow to be considered as a critique of contemporary social conditions. It is, in the end, a thriller, though it takes a long time to get to that point.
The dialogue and acting were superb. There is a great deal of comedy mined from the stiff upper lips of the aristocracy and their servants: even when tragedy strikes, life must continue along its traditional lines. But these are posh people and their bodies are intended to give them pleasure: Venetia has been promiscuous since fourteen and Elspeth had a lesbian phase but gave it up because it was too wet. Perhaps that is the difference between the classes: for most of us, our bodies are tools by which we earn our bread, organs of pleasure only when they are not too fatigued.
There are some memorable moments. Having spied on Felix masturbating in the bath, Oliver licks and slurps the water as it drains away. When Oliver is having sex with Venetia she is on her period, he tells her he is a vampire and licks the blood from his fingers. He has sex with the newly dug earth over Felix’s grave. Finally, he dances naked (penis flapping) through the empty mansion. The Guardian calls these “self-satisfied provocations for an increasingly puritanical moviegoing public”.
In the end, I felt disappointed, perhaps cheated. It is Brideshead Revisited, revisited, mashed up with The Talented Mr Ripley, with the addition of titillation. There is a great deal of focus on the visuals and what the Guardian (3/5 stars) calls “aristocratic daffiness” and there is a lot of concentration on the sex and seduction (the camera worships the sweaty, lean, muscular body of Felix whereas the sex-life of lower-class Oliver has a mucky, slightly nauseous feel). But the plot? Not only is the key action crammed into the last quarter of the film, which has a very different vibe from the rest of it, but are we seriously expected to believe that Oliver gets away with it? Somehow I felt a bit cheated. The undeniable style papered over the cracks (is that itself a metaphor for the aristocracy?) and the sex scenes were manipulative. And the twist at the end, when we were shown alternative views of what happened, meant to change our perspective, seemed a little like the moment in a horror film when you see the monster and realise that it is an actor with prosthetics: it rather punctured the balloon.
Cast
- Oliver Quick is played by Barry Keoghan, the wonderful actor who played the surprisingly clever dafty boy in The Banshees of Inisherin, for which role he was nominated as Best Supporting Actor for both the Oscars and the Golden Globes, winning the BAFTA; he has been nominated for Saltburn as Best Actor in both the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs
- Farleigh Start: Archie Madekwe who has also been in the film Midsommar
- Felix Catton: Jacob Elordi, who was nominated for the BAFTA as Best Supporting Actor; he also played Elvis in Priscilla
- Venetia Catton: Alison Oliver in her film debut
- Elspeth Catton: Rosamund Pike, once a Bond girl in Die Another Day (2002)
- Sir James Catton: the incomparable Richard E Grant who was nominated as Best Supporting Actor in Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTAs in 2019 for Can You Ever Forgive Me
- Guardian 3/5
- 1MDb 7.1/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 71% tomatometer, 79% audience reviews
- Evening Standard 4/5
- Independent 4/5
- New York Times: “the sort of embarrassment you’ll put up with for 75 minutes. But not for 127. It’s too desperate, too confused, too pleased with its petty shocks”
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