Saltburn (2023): Now streaming on Amazon Prime
Review: Mimi Jacobson
🤩🤩
Emerald Fennel makes a gay sex movie.
“What do all these schools teach you? Latin, water polo and child abuse”
Barry Keough
If Jacob Elordi, who plays the old monied campus playboy Felix, were not fresh off The Kissing Booth trilogy, perhaps this movie would get more traction. Although Irish newcomer Barry Keough (Dunkirk, The Banshees of Inisherin) is a believable and sympathetic prep school boy on scholarship, I can’t help but envision Paul Mescal in this role.
The early 2000s soundtrack is a fitting treat, with Cold War Kids “Hang Me Out To Dry” blaring in the background as the boys dip into the pool at night for something other than swimming. The lyrics “You’ve hung me out too too many times” clearly foreshadow. Spoiler Alert ahead!!
Where Fennel’s award winning prior feature Promising Young Woman gave us a fantastical ending to a Me Too encounter, Saltburn fails when it looks at what happens when in the beginning you love some bully and an elusive lothario from the start. I’m a sucker for the scholarship kid in any prep school movie as the movie morphs into a sibling love triangle, this kid and the movie dig their own grave. Emerald Fennel then veers into Yellow Jackets territory as they roast a pig, don deer horns, and then practically engage in necrophilia. I would also like to say that no one would ever eat their own period blood unless maybe Venetia was played by Mia Goth. If women could be canceled…
The movie does capture the early 2000s zeitgeist with Katy Perry kissing a girl and liking it. Another pool party scene, where all the young men take off all their shirts and the millennial anthem “Kids” plays in the background rings true to the characters, the scene, and the setting: “I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the time of my life. So make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.” And the wardrobe does include some coveted fashion pieces: can I please get a pair of Felix’s red/white/black tricolor Ray-Bans?
Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) and Richard E. Grant (Girls) are hotter than the hydrangeas as the wealthy parents, and the soundtrack wins again when the dad breaks out the karaoke machine and expertly belts out, “Applebottom Jeans, Get Low Low Low Low Low Low Low.”
Saltburn? More like Slowburn. This movie is an outsider-insider trope, a Brideshead Revisited for the 2006 set. I’d rather watch Call Me By Your Name:
🤩🤩
