Saltburn (film)

Saltburn is a 2023 black comedy psychological thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by Emerald Fennell, starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, and Archie Madekwe. Set in Oxford and Northamptonshire, it focuses on a student at Oxford who becomes fixated with a popular, aristocratic fellow student, who later invites him to spend the summer at his eccentric family's estate.

Saltburn premiered at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on 31 August 2023. It was released in cinemas in the United Kingdom on 17 November 2023 and in select cinemas in the United States on the same day. The film had its US wide release on 22 November before its streaming release by Amazon Prime Video on 22 December, on which it became one of the most-streamed films. The film received generally positive reviews, and was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards and five BAFTA Film Awards.

Plot
In late 2006, scholarship student Oliver Quick struggles to fit in at the University of Oxford because of his inexperience with upper-class manners. He befriends Felix Catton, an affluent and popular student who is sympathetic to Oliver's stories of his parents' substance abuse and mental health issues. When Oliver becomes distraught over his father's sudden death, Felix comforts him and invites him to spend the summer at his family's country house, Saltburn.

At Saltburn, Oliver meets Felix's parents Sir James and Lady Elspeth, his sister Venetia, and Elspeth's friend Pamela, and he reunites with Felix's American cousin Farleigh, with whom Oliver has had a tense relationship as Oxford classmates. Oliver quickly wins over Felix's family except for Farleigh, and his obsession with Felix grows. One night, after watching Felix masturbate in a bathtub, he lustfully drinks the semen-laced bathwater. Later, having seen Venetia waiting outside his bedroom window, he performs oral sex on her while she is on her period. Farleigh witnesses this and informs Felix, but Oliver claims nothing happened when Felix confronts him. At night, Oliver initiates sexual advances on Farleigh, threatening him in the process. The next morning, James evicts Farleigh after receiving a report from Sotheby's about his intention to sell some of James's valuables.

As the summer ends, Elspeth and James plan a party for Oliver's birthday. Felix surprises Oliver with a trip to see his estranged mother, causing Oliver to panic. Upon arriving at the family's house in Prescot, Felix realises Oliver had lied to him about his upbringing. His father is still alive, neither of his parents have substance abuse or mental health troubles, and they live in a respectable middle-class suburb. Horrified and hurt by Oliver's deception, Felix decides not to tell anyone to spare his own family the humiliation but orders Oliver to leave Saltburn after the party. During the extravagant celebrations, Oliver seeks to make amends with Felix by expressing his adoration for him, but Felix rejects him and suggests he seek help.

The next morning, Felix is found dead in Saltburn's hedge maze. Oliver implies Felix's death was connected to Farleigh supplying drugs during the party, and James withdraws financial support from Farleigh and bans him from ever returning. Oliver mourns Felix and visits his grave alone, where he lies naked on the grave soil and masturbates on it. After Felix's funeral, Elspeth insists Oliver extend his stay at Saltburn. Venetia, increasingly distraught and disturbed, accuses Oliver of destroying her family. He attempts to seduce her, but she eventually rebuffs him. The next day, Venetia is found dead, having slit her wrists in the bathtub. Despondent over Oliver's continuing presence at Saltburn and Elspeth's closeness to him, James bribes him to leave, which Oliver accepts.

In 2022, Oliver reads about James's death in a newspaper. He subsequently has a chance encounter with Elspeth at a café. She is delighted to see him again, insisting he return with her to Saltburn. After spending several months with Oliver, Elspeth becomes terminally ill. On her deathbed, Oliver confides in Elspeth that he is responsible for all of the tragic and horrifying events at Saltburn. He orchestrated his initial meeting with Felix at Oxford and poisoned Felix's drink in the maze, resulting in his death. He also placed razor blades beside Venetia while she was bathing, encouraging her suicide. He even planned his encounter with Elspeth at the café, after which she bequeathed all her assets, including Saltburn, to him. He then removes her life support, killing her. Having now assumed ownership of Saltburn and the Catton family fortune, Oliver happily dances naked around the mansion.

Development and casting
Saltburn is the second film written and directed by Emerald Fennell, after Promising Young Woman (2020). By January 2022, Tom Ackerley and Margot Robbie's LuckyChap Entertainment was in talks to produce, after collaborating with Fennell on her previous film. In May 2022, Ackerley, Robbie, and Josey McNamara were confirmed as producers, while Rosamund Pike, Jacob Elordi, and Barry Keoghan joined the cast. Fennell said that Australian actor Elordi "...did the most exceptional audition... He did such a genius, genius bit of observational comedy. He really really understood that for all of [Felix's] beauty and charisma, he's just sort of a spoiled little boy. He came in and just absolutely blew us all away".

Carey Mulligan, star of Promising Young Woman, was revealed to be part of the cast in December 2022.

In writing the film, Fennell wanted to sympathise with unlikeable people, saying "'the sorts of people that we can't stand, the sorts of people who are abhorrent—if we can love them, if we can fall in love with these people, if we can understand why this is so alluring, in spite of its palpable cruelty and unfairness and sort of strangeness, if we all want to be there too, I think that's just such an interesting dynamic.'" She had long wanted to make her own version of films and books set in a country house, and set the film in 2006 to "really [knock] the fucking glamour off things" by setting it in the recent past.

Filming
Filming began on 16 July 2022, with Linus Sandgren serving as cinematographer. The film is shown in a 4:3 aspect ratio, with Fennell saying it gives the impression of "peeping in."

Fennell was determined not to film in an estate familiar to viewers, and wanted to set the movie in one location, so aligning the filming with the film's plot, saying, "It was important to me that we were all in there together, that the making of the film in some way had that feeling of a summer where everyone loses their mind together...I didn't want to be constantly picking up and moving." and avoiding the need for post-production adjustments due to multiple locations. Fennell was successful, with filming occurring at the University of Oxford at Magdalen College, St Hugh's College and Brasenose College and in Drayton House, Northamptonshire, which had never been used for a film before. As part of the contract, no one was allowed to reveal the location of the house or the identity of its owners. Despite the house's opulence, the actors ultimately became familiar with Drayton's interiors over the course of filming and comfortable working in it, in order to convey the idea that this grand location was for their characters completely normal and simply their home.

Costumes were designed with 2000s fashion displayed in the form of ostentatious jackets, rugby shirts, and loud jewellery.

Music
The film is scored by Anthony Willis, who previously scored Fennell's Promising Young Woman. The soundtrack was released by Milan Records on 17 November 2023.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor's 2001 song "Murder on the Dancefloor" was featured in the last scene of the film. As a result, the song received 1.5 million streams on New Year's Eve on Spotify and subsequently re-entered the UK Singles Chart at number eight on 5 January 2024 with 2.2 million streams, marking the song's best-ever streaming week. The film also features Ladytron's 2005 track "Destroy Everything You Touch", Mason and Princess Superstar's 2006 track "Perfect (Exceeder)" and Tomcraft's 2002 track "Loneliness" which, in addition to "Murder on the Dancefloor", became trending songs, particularly on TikTok.

Themes and influences
The film focuses on excess and obsession. Fennell stated "I drew from my own experience of being a human person, who has felt that thing we all feel at that time in our life which is that absolute insane grip of obsessive love...But obviously I didn't quite go to the lengths that some of the people [in the film] do".

Discussing the film's influences, Fennell has cited A Clockwork Orange (1971), Cruel Intentions (1999), Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938), and the novel The Go-Between (1953) by L.P. Hartley and its 1971 film adaptation. She commented, "I think that I was sort of looking more at that British Country House tradition of The Go-Between and that sort of very specific British... sort of Joseph Losey world, where class and power and sex all kind of collide in one specific place". Fennell cited Losey's The Servant (1963) as an influence because of its "undeniable erotic power" that "relies entirely on the threat of violence — not just literal violence, but a complete chaotic upending of the status quo".

Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and its film adaptation (1999) have often been cited as an influence by critics due to the common themes of social class and the similarities between Oliver and Tom Ripley, though Fennell herself has downplayed these comparisons. Richard Brody of The New Yorker also found similarities to the novel Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Although Farrago called the film as "the lovechild of Call Me by Your Name (2017) and Parasite (2019)".

Some critics also pointed out that rich stylisation and visual influences in the film hold some aesthetic influences from Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). According to these critics Fennell's Gothic visual style in general mirrors the mythical elements of Coppola's 1992 Dracula film about otherworldly seduction: the Saltburn garden scene especially parallels the carnal possessions of Lucy (Sadie Frost) and Mina (Winona Ryder), who are cosmically drawn to Gary Oldman's Count Dracula; he inevitably sucks their energies away in a slow sapping of desire after luring each into the garden not of Eden but sin. Saltburn has been billed as a sort of "vampire movie" by filmmaker Fennell herself.

Other critics have found similarities to Pier Paolo Pasolini's film Theorem (1968) and Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), which also addressed themes of class, power, desire, and seduction. Fennell described her satire of the British class system as "Barry Lyndon meets indie sleaze".

Release
Saltburn had its world premiere at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on 31 August 2023. It premiered in the United Kingdom (UK) as the opening film of the 67th BFI London Film Festival on 4 October 2023. It also premiered in Australia at SXSW Sydney on 20 October 2023.

Amazon spent $75 million to acquire distribution rights. In the United States, Saltburn was given a limited release on 17 November 2023, followed by a wide release on 22 November. It was originally scheduled to be released a week earlier but was moved to take advantage of the initial positive response it received at its Telluride premiere. The film was highly popular on Amazon Prime, becoming one of its top 10 worldwide film debuts, as viewership quadrupled two weeks after its launch. Deadline Hollywood credited the success to the film's viral marketing and word-of-mouth. Saltburn-themed videos amassed nearly 4 billion views on TikTok, with three million influencers and content creators engaging with the film across all platforms and the official Salturn socials obtaining 153 million views.

Warner Bros. Pictures handled the UK and Ireland release of Saltburn, with a 16 November release in Australia and a 17 November release in the UK. The film became available to stream on Amazon Prime Video on 22 December 2023.

Box office
Saltburn grossed $11.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $9.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $21.1 million.

In its limited opening weekend, the film made $322,651 from seven theatres. Expanding to 1,566 theatres the following Wednesday, the wide expansion of the film was released alongside Napoleon and Wish, and made $684,000 on its first day of wide release and then $301,000 on Thanksgiving Day. Its debut made $1.8 million on the weekend (and a total of $2.9 million over the five-day frame), finishing in ninth. The film dropped just 16% the following weekend, grossing $1.6 million.

Critical response
Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an "A+" to "F" scale, and those polled by PostTrak gave it a 75% overall positive score, and 42% said they would definitely recommend it.

The Guardian reviewed the film after its August premiere. Its critic Peter Bradshaw gave it three out of five. He noted that it "boasts dazzling turns from Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan" but that "the heavily drawn-out ending feels uncertain". Writing in the Observer, Wendy Ide wrote that it "stars a miscast Barry Keoghan (he's way too old for the role)" but that "Rosamund Pike, as Felix's mother Elspeth, is gloriously rude; Archie Madekwe, as poor relation Farleigh, is a malicious delight". She awarded it two out of five.

Nicholas Barber, reviewing for the BBC, enjoyed the "outrageous, laugh-out-loud punchlines" but felt that "Fennell is prone to fumble" plot twists. Barber praised the "superb ensemble cast", especially Keoghan ("magnetic"), Pike ("steals the show"), and Elordi ("a revelation"). He concluded that "if you see it as a lurid pulp fantasy rather than a penetrating satire, then Saltburn is deliriously enjoyable" and awarded it four out of five. Empire also praised the charismatic ensemble cast and gave the film three out of five. In her review, Sophie Butcher reported that "Saltburn looks divine. Fennell's eye is extraordinary, and alongside cinematographer Linus Sandgren, she captures the grand beauty of her architectural locations impeccably" but was disappointed that "scenes often build to reach the cusp of something truly electric, but are let down by clunky dialogue".

Writing in Sight and Sound, Sophie Monks Kaufman found that "the story's superficial treatment of its characters ... becomes increasingly ruinous" and that "the most menacing thing anyone can muster here is a passive-aggressive karaoke choice". She was also underwhelmed by the film's "ostentatious visual language". However, Entertainment Weekly columnist Maureen Lee Lenker gave Saltburn an "A", saying the film is a "Gothic thriller dusted with poisonous candy-pop glitter…Its endless visual and literary layers will bring its ardent admirers back to it again and again, because it is a triumph of the cinema of excess, in all its orgiastic, unapologetic glory."