Saltburn It Down

On the most surprisingly polarizing film of the year

Y’all are roasting Emerald Fennell on this one. The buildup to Saltburn’s release has felt much like pent-up sexual frustration thanks to an especially horny press tour from (presumably!!) heterosexual actors Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan. Now that Saltburn has finally arrived in theatres, and the actors can stop gooning us teases of wild scenes in the film like Keoghan watching Elordi masturbate in a baththub then lick up the cum and the water like a Martinelli’s apple juice; critics are dropping banger after banger, torching the film the film to the ground. Somehow, Fennell’s second feature film has become the year’s most polarizing film (well, the most polarizing film not made by the IDF).

As with most movies of any quality, there are detractors and supporters to be found online. For as many critical pans, there are also fans declaring its horny brilliance online. The film, which depicts Keoghan as Oliver Quick, a scholarship student at Oxford in the mid 2000s who befriends the rich, astoundingly hot Felix Catton (Elordi) and gets invited to his family’s manor for the summer. Never mind that Keoghan is also astoundingly hot when he takes off his clothes midway through the film, all he had to do was take off his glasses and look, there’s abs! It makes about as much sense as Tanner Buchanan somehow being a loser in the 2021 remake He’s All That, where he was an ever hotter stand-in for already hot Rachel Leigh Cook who made geek to chic a cultural moment in 1999’s She’s All That. (I think Cook plays the same character in the remake, but I can’t be sure… I turned it off 20 minutes into the film. And I had Covid when it dropped, which tells you that 20 minutes was worse than my boredom in quarantine.)

Anyway, it’s no shock that Saltburn has many fans online because it’s an absolutely gorgeous film thanks to cinematography by Linus Sandgren, who has turned several boring films into Tumblr fantasies for Damien Chazelle. The mid 2000s setting paired with music of that period (The Killers! MGMT! Sophie Ellis-Bextor!), alongside Victoria Boydell’s editing makes Saltburn the best music video of the year. In that regard, the film is akin to a Tom Ford masterpiece like Nocturnal Animals. Gorgeous to look at and absolutely nothing else. If Saltburn played on mute at a museum you’d pause for a few moments to take in its beauty before moseying along to see a new Basquiat on loan.

Which is to say, it’s a perfectly fine movie about a murderous college student even if it does riff on The Talented Mr. Ripley in the worst possible ways, though Fennell said in my recent Keep It interview with her that the film was not inspired by Highsmith’s novel nor the film adaptation. I don’t think it’s earned most of the vitriol that has been thrown at it, not least of all because I think Fennell is actually a quite funny and charming woman in person. I enjoyed talking to her about Vanderpump Rules at a recent dinner party.

A friend recently queried if Saltburn might become a Cruel Intentions for a new generation (as if). To which I responded: that film, which also received a critical lashing in 1999, was at least a film made for teenagers. It was a crude, over-sexed, and biting adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses. Even if the 199 film didn’t hold a candle to the 1988 adaptation with Glenn Close, Michelle Pfeiffer, and John Malkovich… it was iconic in its own right. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon, and Ryan Phillippe had already become stars by 1999 and the film clinched their star power. But once again, it was a movie made for teenagers and the only awards buzz it garnered was for the Blockbuster and MTV Movie Awards. At the latter it won Best Kiss, for the now historic sloppy tongue kiss between Gellar and Selma Blair, and a Best Female Performance for Gellar.

Most of the hate for Saltburn comes from its audacity to be in contention for the Oscars. It has an insane awards marketing push behind it thanks to Fennell’s Best Original Screenplay Oscar win for Promising Young Woman and the addition of Elordi and Keoghan as leads, alongside Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, and Carey Mulligan in supporting roles. It’s Oscar bait when it should be Teen Choice Award bait. Which is not a knock at movies for teenagers (most of you know, my favorite film is Bring It On). Movies for teenagers are often more fun and incisive about culture than films that receive Oscar buzz. 10 Things I Hate About You wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, for instance! The rest of the hate is for the audacity of Emerald Fennell to be a seemingly privileged white woman making transgressive art and being lauded for it. Which is to be expected when most of the film’s transgressions elicit “girl wtf” cackles instead of genuine revulsion. Fucking the dirt on someone’s grave isn’t even as shocking as an episode of Passions.

Most people who write a film like Saltburn imagine themselves to be Keoghan and what would happen if they gave into their worst impulses. But Fennell is Elordi. And she gave into the worst impulse a writer could have. Imagining that she’s not.

Editor’s note: A previous version mentioned Ryan Gosling as a star of ‘Cruel Intentions.’ It’s been corrected to Ryan Phillippe. A Gosling version wouldn’t been a better movie…