Saltburn Review: The Erotic Drama Everyone’s Talking About Isn’t That Good

IN Promising Young Woman (2020), the directorial and screenwriting debut of Emerald Fennell, sex mattered a lot. In addition, the subject is prone to violence. The story of a young woman who becomes violent to avenge the rape of her childhood friend is disturbing and brutal. But he stopped short of delving into misogyny and rape culture. The same thing happens in Saltburn (2023), her latest film, in which the director makes a similar mistake.

This time around, the plot explores obsession and envy, as well as violence, eroticism and lust. The above despite some sort of subtext about classism and the importance of social status as a dangerous scenario. But either because there are too many themes or because most of them are poorly developed, the film feels like it leaves behind many of its toughest moments. Especially when, due to problems with tone and pacing, the plot – again from Fennel – seems to be divided into three parts.

The first—and perhaps the best—tells how Felix (Jacob Elordi, from Euphoria) and Oliver (Barry Keoghan Eternals) – fellow students at Oxford. Everything is moderately luxurious, decadent and even Dickensian. Both are friends who at times seem to veer from passionate friendship to something more perverted. Moreover, the director turns around. Felix into the object of desire of the new millennium. The camera follows Elordi closely, and the script gives him the best lines as well as long, detailed close-ups.

The idol who shines under the camera

Of course, this wild, lustful and carefree (and amoral) character is destined to bear the burden of the plot. This is a temptation, and, like everything, it becomes a symbol of the unattainable and irresistible. Only the story is so poor that it depends on the actor’s fascination with male beauty and how the plot brings it to the fore.

The intention, no doubt, is to show what the studious and quiet Oliver goes through and how close he comes to succumbing to the involuntary erotic invitation that his friend embodies. But whether it’s because the film insists on this theme too much or the script doesn’t have enough resources to be more subtle, Saltburn it becomes repetitive. Moreover, he emphasizes his ideas with such insistence that his second and third parts lose interest.

In particular, the fact that Oliver is poor and due to the harsh upbringing he grew up with. This makes her desire for Felix and what it entails more difficult to bear than just an erotic impulse, perhaps unrequited. However, the director wastes time returning to the idea that wealth and humble origins can change our love. A controversial topic that is forgotten and added at will, but without order or coherence.

A house that keeps secrets

After a family tragedy, Oliver finds himself in emotional and psychological limbo. So, inviting Felix to his family home is the headline Saltburn – No This is not only a greeting, but also an opportunity to get acquainted with the decadent world that surrounds him.

It is then that the film turns into a gothic fairy tale, clearly imitating Mr. Ripley’s Talent (1999) Anthony Minghella. The friendship between the main characters becomes toxic, strange and unpleasant. But what could have been a story of misdeeds and manipulation becomes almost a scene of teenage jealousy. The director uses a fixed camera to explore the monumental exterior of the mansion in Northamptonshire, England, where the film was shot. Linus Sandgren’s photographs transform long walks, conversations and night scenes into a visual fantasy of vibrant colors and subtle shadows.

However, this argument becomes superficial and fallacious. Although the endless gardens and luxurious rooms give it a gloomy and attractive look. Essentially, all the erotic tension that the plot has managed to accumulate is dissolved in the feeling that Oliver represents a real danger that no one discovered in time. Increasingly annoying and almost funny Saltburn Try to connect the feeling of threat with the feeling of sexual need.

The director cannot find a middle ground between them. Thus, the film opts for a more than obvious outcome, one that leaves bold innuendos in its wake to be entirely melodramatic and rushed. Which makes its third section an appendix of a completely different story, chaotic and devoid of the slightest appeal.

The scandal wasn’t that big.

Saltburn It hit theaters amid some controversy due to its erotic background and Jacob Elordi becoming the internet’s new obsession. But although the actor obeys and leaves after him, It would seem that the game, which will mark the “before” and “after” of his career, is not so important in the film.

In the last minutes the plot becomes boring, tedious and uninteresting. This turns the story into a game of traps that doesn’t go very well. Felix’s character loses his potential – a problem that has more to do with the script than the actor who plays him – but Oliver gets the worst of it. Transformed into a twisted creature, he’s not even half as interesting as the movie makes him out to be. In conclusion, the plot leaves the feeling that there could be many things going on, but none of them are actually very interesting to talk about. Your biggest problem.