Saltburn Review: A Repulsive, Dirty, Twisted Reflection on Class

Claustrophobic from the outset in a relentless 4x3 universe, Emerald Fennell's sophomore feature, Saltburn, is a repulsive, dirty, twisted reflection on class that will have you hooked.

Framing decadence in only a way he can, director of photography Linus Sandgren steps from Hollywood in Babylon to a world just as shiny on the surface as it is gross underneath - Oxford University. His lens is our ticket to a place only a prestige few get to see, immaculate in capturing the reality of obscene wealth that leaves people gasping for something real.

Oliver Quick is Felix Catton's something. The poor boy with drug-addicted parents - it's a tempting tale. Rich people are so devoid of meaningful worry that they must insert themselves into charity to feel their capital (both social and economic) is warranted.

Beautiful people doing abhorrent things are a staple source of intrigue across history. Felix and Oliver maintain a Gatsby/Carroway dynamic, but it's a Fennell flick, so expectations must be subverted. The watcher becomes the watched as the actor becomes the director, and slowly, all that glitters is no longer gold.

Fennell shows us that even the upper echelons divide. At Oxford, the scholarship students separate from the rich, and the rich separate from the richer. It is a society, a world with its own ethics and a language that cannot be understood from the outside, but Fennell invites us to take part in the vulgarity, if only for 127 minutes.

Grotesque is an understatement. We see vomit across mirrors in filthy rooms, the epitome of student life, but somehow, it feels intentional, a way to spit on the wealth that raised them, a way to deny that they will become like the people who raised them. Even the rich don't want to become their parents.

Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike are mummy and daddy to Elordi's Felix. Saltburn is their estate, Wonderland-like in grandeur. Fennell adopts place the same way films like Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird and Barry Jenkins' Moonlight do. The estate is a character that watches your every move, luring you closer into its traps.

In this dreamy isolation, we lean further into the repulsion, tapping into the most animalistic part of the human psyche. Things you'd never dreamed of doing seem like the catharsis we've been aching for in a world twisted in its own web of divisive politics. Through Oliver, we get to feel all the dirty thoughts pruned out of us for being too extreme. There's no such censorship in Saltburn.

Fennell won an Oscar for her first feature screenplay, Promising Young Woman, in 2021. Saltburn's script is on another level, and while this year's award is Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig's for the taking for Barbie, Saltburn gets to play among some excellent original work that proves we're in a golden age of authors.