Summertime Sadness: How Saltburn Slices Into the Upper Crust
Her dark satire about sexual violence won her an Academy Award. Now Emerald Fennell burns down a new target: the British aristocracy.
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a year ago
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Why should I see Saltburn?
If your sense of humour runs dark and elite takedowns are your jam, Saltburn is the delicious treat you’ve been waiting for. If you’re easily shocked… maybe stick to The Crown?
What is Saltburn about?
Saltburn explores the following social causes:
Poverty & Inequality, Family & Community, Mental Health
Recently we looked at the sickening disparity (and joyous takedown!) of American wealth in Dumb Money, and now we’re buttoning our tuxes and brushing off our ballgowns for a very British take on having way, way too much money.
But Saltburn is no creaky Downton Abbey snoozer. English writer, producer and director Emerald Fennell is way more interested in smashing together like atoms the foibles and greed of the wealthy, with the desperate need to belong from the not-so-privileged… then standing back to watch us gasp at the outcome.
What do we mean? Let’s just say, we haven’t seen this many bodily fluids served up as plot points since the debaucherous Babylon… another glitzy, sweaty, salty affair. Before we dive in to this aristocratic thriller, though, here’s a quick Saltburn FAQ to get you up to speed!
Who is Emerald Fennell?
She’s the dynamic British voice who's not just breaking glass ceilings in Hollywood, she's shattering them with a witty sledgehammer. As writer/creator, she’s the brilliant mind behind Killing Eve (where assassins are, ahem, as stylish as their kills). As producer/director, she lashed us to the misogyny mainsail with her debut feature Promising Young Woman, a film that left us questioning societal norms, and won Fennell a Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
Keen eyes will also know her on-screen as Camilla Parker-Bowles in Series 3-4 of The Crown, and as poor long-suffering pregnant Midge in Greta Gerwig & Margot Robbie’s billion-dollar smash Barbie. With her output, it’s pretty clear that Fennell is on a mission, and that mission is to ensure that women in film have more than two dimensions — they're the protagonists, the antiheroes, and everything in between.
What is Saltburn about?
You could call it a Talented Mr. Ripley for the new millennium. Fennell’s roving camera has us navigating the moneyed halls of Oxford with Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), a dorky misfit sans family wealth but clearly equipped with a knack for survival. His well-heeled peers barely bother concealing their sniggers at his lame dress sense and lack of a multi-hyphenated surname - all except Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), Oxford University “it boy” with an unruffled sense of cool. Felix is every campus dreamboat, the Winklevoss twins and James Dean (ask your Nan) rolled into one, but he takes a shine to Oliver after a roadside mishap.
Oliver’s flat tire favour for Felix blossoms into an invitation to spend the summer at Saltburn: the Catton family's impossibly opulent playground, a glamorous country house and sprawling estate. Saltburn isn't just a mansion; it's a world where wealth flows like champagne - and Oliver’s story of his tragic, drug-addicted parents and underprivileged childhood quickly turn him into the Cattons' favourite accessory. But like most stories of wealth disparity, different layers of secrets and deception get exposed as Oliver tiptoes through the minefield of privilege.
Is Saltburn a gay friendly movie?
You bet. Fennell herself has labelled it as “absolutely” a queer film. Chatting to The Pink News, she said queerness “is part of the very fabric of the film. This is a film entirely about desire, and that desire takes every conceivable manifestation… This is a world where everyone wants everyone.”
Fennell also spoke about the blurring of sexual lines in the film, a theme that’s called on more than once to keep us on our toes questioning the characters’ motivations. “There are some characters in this that are almost so hyper-hetero that they feel comfortable toeing the line,” Fennell says, “and then there are characters who are absolutely fluid in every conceivable way.”
What does Saltburn have to say about class and wealth?
Oliver is endearingly, almost naively wide-eyed when he arrives at Saltburn (one of the film’s big laughs, and there are plenty, comes as the gigantic front doors swing open for him magically, before foot-butlers pop out like clockwork). Fennell makes sure she juxtaposes Felix’s uber-casual house tour with Oliver’s wonder at the place, as the steadicam cruises around the impossibly oversized halls, galleries, master bedrooms, and gilded bathrooms.
For the charming and aristocratic Catton family - Felix, his parents Sir James and Lady Elspeth (Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike), and his sister, Venetia (Alison Oliver) - hosting a young academic who overcame a broken childhood to win a scholarship to the world’s finest university is too appealing. It’s a goldmine of upper-class credibility; another point of pride for Elspeth (who’s otherwise numb with boredom) to coo about with her socialite peers. But as the summer wears on, Oliver’s backstory might not hold water for too much longer…
Speaking of water, the vast property’s many water sources are a returning area for pivotal plot developments (water being the cradle of life, perhaps? After all, water is one of the key differentiators between poverty, and the flourishing of a successful culture). There’s the pond where the family laze in the summer heat, gossiping over perceived scandals and, later in the film, searching in frenzied fashion for a missing family member. There’s Saltburn’s river, where the Cattons have a tradition of dropping stones named for loved ones who’ve passed away.
Is Saltburn based on a true story?
I sure hope not. The concept for the Saltburn movie was an original idea from Oscar winning filmmaker Emerald Fennell, who says that “This film started seven or eight years ago with an image of someone licking the bottom of the bathtub. You know everything from that image — that’s about somebody wanting something they can’t have."
What's with the bathtubs in Saltburn?
True to that original visual flash that inspired the entire movie, Saltburn dwells heavily on the estate's deeply luxurious standalone bathtubs, which we voyeuristically visit alongside Oliver throughout the film. Fennell stages increasing drama and tension here in this normally relaxing space, as the characters flex, weep, masturbate, hurl accusations, and engage in a truly disturbing ritual involving bathwater that gives us our first real clue to Oliver’s dual self.
As well as the imagery of 'wanting what we can't have', bathtubs in Saltburn create an interesting link between morality (bathing as both moral cleanliness and a kind of baptism), and sexuality (with all the sensual, slippery nakedness of a bath being explored throughout the film).
How does Saltburn explore morality and sexuality?
We’re going to tiptoe here, because there’s a key reveal that we don’t want to spoil. But suffice to say that Saltburn, the estate, and Saltburn the film are both fertile ground for Fennell to poke and prod at society’s preconceptions of stealth, wealth and mental health. And she doesn’t miss her shots.
As a reminder, Saltburn is a satire, and a dark one at that. There are moments in the film that would have any political correctness campaigner turning inside out and going blue. Talking about a family acquaintance who died by suicide, Elspeth mutters “she’d do anything for attention” with a shrug. And Elspeth describes her daughter’s eating disorder as her stage when she had “fingers for pudding.”
What does 'fingers for pudding' mean in Saltburn?
Update: we've realised that a lot of viewers have been mystified by this line, perhaps because not every English-speaking country uses the word 'pudding' in the same way. In the UK, 'pudding' refers to 'dessert'. So when Elspeth says that her daughter had "fingers for pudding", she is crassly implying that her daughter suffers from self-induced vomiting after meals, also known as bulimia.
Moments like this are intended to shock; to reveal to us how the character’s privilege has either entirely dried up their sense of reality (in the Cattons’ case) or fuelled their desire to cross a line (in Oliver’s).
Is Saltburn about vampires?
Yes and no. This has become somewhat of a meme since the film's 2023 release, in part because of a scene when Oliver seduces Venetia and makes a move to give her oral sex, and she tells him it’s the wrong time of the month. His reply? “I’m a vampire”, before disappearing under her dress.
Are the characters in Saltburn literally vampires? No. But one of Emerald Fennel's descriptions of Saltburn is that it's a "vampire movie" that "goes both ways". By this, she means that both Oliver and the Cattons have vampiric traits - Oliver's craving for the privileged lifeblood that the Cattons posess, and the Cattons themselves for their dynastic, almost mythical power. Saltburn also taps into the visual language of vampires - candles, darkness, sweeping staircases, strange rituals, and a link between lust and violence.
How horny is Saltburn?
We'll be honest - it's pretty horny. As well as his dalliance with Venitia, Oliver isn’t choosy: he also openly flirts with Felix’s male cousin, Farleigh, and shoots a string of comments towards Elspeth that are so suggestive, the screen nearly begins to fog up. Fennell applies a dreamy, lustful filter to Saltburn; an unanswered desire hangs over the entire film.
As Jessie Tu writes for Women’s Agenda, “the movie is a voyeuristic fantasy of male libidinal desire… what it really captures is the ubiquity in the way male desire can destroy everything around it. It’s an experientially rich, mastabatory ride.”
How does Saltburn compare to Promising Young Woman?
While not exactly twins, they’re very much cut from the same cloth.
ABC has called Woman “an astounding sugar rush of a debut, with a plot that sliced and diced its way through a stadium's worth of lecherous men” and cheekily suggested that, with its similarities in tone, Saltburn could almost have been titled “Promising Young Man”.
Both films deliberately make us uncomfortable. Both films put us in situations where we question our empathy with the protagonist’s actions. And both rely on vivid, almost garish design cues and motifs to lock us into a sensation before metaphorically tearing it away.
Did Promising Young Woman cross the line for you? Then Saltburn is probably (actually, definitely) a skip. But if you couldn’t get enough of Woman and the confronting, spicy darkness lurking beneath its candy shell, Saltburn is a film you’ll need on your watchlist.
What are critics saying about Saltburn?
“It’s like Bridgerton on amphetamines. Or Downton in a K-hole. And it’s appealing because, however fanciful and thematically absurd, there is truth here.” - Kevin Maher, Times UK
“I was often watching though my fingers. It is fearless — and intoxicatingly so.” - Deborah Ross, The Spectator
“Fennell’s second feature is both evocative and provocative, with lashings of style… properly enjoyable.” - Sophie Butcher, Empire
“Saltburn is dynamite, bursting with lust, lies, and laughs. If loving a movie this willfully seedy, boldly savage, smoking hot, and unnervingly sensational is wrong, then being right is boring.” - Kristy Puchko, Mashable
Fully on board, or disagree big time? We’d love to hear your take. Leave a review to share your thoughts with the good.film community!
So what’s the meaning behind Saltburn?
There’s no doubt that Emerald Fennell is a hot-button filmmaker; she’s committed to putting stories on screen that make us wriggle. She’s not here to hold our hand through moral grey areas, and perhaps that's the main takeaway from the movie - it's morally ambiguous. Like Saltburn’s hedge maze, Fennell loves to gleefully line her stories with nettles, thorns and poison ivy, then shove us into the centre and watch us cautiously pick our way out.
Some might feel that Saltburn swerves into territory by its conclusion that’s too pulpy; too out-there, too dark. Others will be delighted by its zingy sense of no-fucks-given; a kind of queer-pop rollercoaster ride that, if it proves too bumpy for you, hey - you weren’t really invited on board in the first place.
The best word for it might be “brazen”, and Fennell seems to be happier going for a reaction and definitely getting one - no matter what it might be - than creating a less risky storytelling experience that ends up being forgotten. Job done then; as a film that features nude mansion dancing, graveyard lovemaking and one hell of a spiky twist, we definitely won’t forget Saltburn in a hurry.
Where can I watch Saltburn?
If you're after a big screen experience, you can still watch Saltburn in cinemas - buy a Good Tix to see the film for less and support a good cause! Saltburn has also just arrived on Amazon's Prime Video - add it to your watchlist or stream it here.
