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Saltburn (2023)
  
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Directed
by:
Emerald Fennell |
COUNTRY
United Kingdom/
United States |
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GENRE
Psychological Drama/
Black comedy |
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NORWEGIAN TITLE
Saltburn |
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RUNNING
TIME
131 minutes |
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Produced
by:
Emerald Fennell
Josey McNamara
Margot Robbie |
Written by:
Emerald Fennell |
Review
Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman)
is the woman behind this little journey back to the early 2000s
among the British upper classes together with Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), an enigmatic young Oxford student whose disparate
behaviour, which alternates between nerdy awkwardness and seductive confidence,
baffles and beguiles supporting characters and us viewers alike. The obvious nods to
The Talented Mr.
Ripley feel more like a homage than a rip-off and
therefore don't detract
from the story, but unlike Patricia Highsmith's stories about Ripley,
Saltburn's comments about social classes and decadence are less poignant and
ultimately merely scratch the surface. Fennell's characters have the outline of
being multifaceted, sometimes even authentic, but she still
falls short of truly fleshing them out for us. They never
become more than pawns in her macabre little menagerie. Amusing as
the little world of Saltburn is in and of itself, the film lacks the ability to
transcend from an artistic idea into a complete, resonating end
product. You always retain the sense that you are inside a
filmmaker's head instead of actually there on that estate. To call
the film a wasted opportunity would be to diminish Fennell's obvious
level of ambition, which is commendable in its own right. But
although Saltburn aspires to be so much more than the sum of its
parts, too often does its ambition become a distraction more than
anything else,
something which goes for everything from the
boxed-in 1.33:1 aspect ratio to Barry Keoghan's disjointed Oliver
character.
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