This is Fennell\u2019s sophomore feature, after winning the original screenplay Oscar for Promising Young Woman<\/em>, and it\u2019s stuffed with the kind of brashness such awards can bestow; this is a bold and loud picture, deliberately and ornately provocative. The plotting is nothing new \u2014 it\u2019s basically Teorema<\/em> by way of The Talented Mr. Ripley<\/em> \u2014 and it begins as a fairly formulaic tale of class and caste at Oxford University in the mid-aughts. Our protagonist is painfully shy scholarship student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), who latches on to handsome, charismatic, ridiculously rich Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi); touched by Oliver\u2019s tales of familial woe, Felix offers to bring him home for the holidays, to his family\u2019s \u201cmassive fuck-off castle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there\u2019s a vague sense of darkness burbling, underneath even these standard expositional scenes. The camerawork reflects Oliver\u2019s range of motion; the early scenes are mostly shot within the locked-off limits of the university setting, but the aesthetic shifts once they get to the castle. The camera glides, moving freely through this world of wealth and privilege. First Oliver just observes quietly, strategizing, figuring out everyone\u2019s soft spots and pressure points, and Fennell\u2019s script is carefully putting all the pieces into place \u2014 too deliberately and schematically, perhaps, while attempting to distract us with the dirty, faux-punk energy of the filmmaking (and occasionally succeeding). As with Promising Young Woman<\/em>, she has a good eye and ear, adroitly using light and (especially) shadow to create the appropriately wormy atmosphere, and deploying a tight sound design (the contrast, late in the game, of pounding house music and dead silence is especially affecting).<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not breaking any critical ground to classify Keoghan as a peculiar actor; his very presence is unsettling, and his best directors have used that to their advantage. Fennell wisely situates the picture around his weird energy, and he gives himself over to the material \u2014 he\u2019s fearless, even when the movie leaves him out to dry. The evolution of the character is impressive as well, from the bespectacled and withdrawn wallflower of the early scenes, for whom it feels like a chore to even exhale, to the easy-breezy interloper of the second hour.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fennell also avoids some easy traps with the character of Felix, providing the smart ripple of making him a mostly <\/em>good guy \u2014 even when he\u2019s cruel it\u2019s not malevolent, not really. He\u2019s just spoiled. (Elordi\u2019s best single moment comes early; watch the way he just siiiiiiiiiighs over the flat tire.) His family is the same, only demonstrably worse, just a bunch of vapid, terrible rich people, and they\u2019ve never had to be anything more. \u201cYou\u2019re so\u2026 real,\u201d Felix\u2019s sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) tells Oliver. \u201cI think I like you even more than last year\u2019s one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, so far, so good. It all feels fairly staid, a British class satire, at least on the surface \u2014 and then Fennell goes into goblin mode, exploring the comic (and, occasionally, erotic) incongruity of grimy little sex acts in this refined setting. Promising<\/em> star Carey Mulligan has a very funny cameo as a leeching hippie chick. As the father, Richard E. Grant makes for a splendid upper-class twit. Oliver, an actor previously unfamiliar to this viewer, is quite good, particularly in a bathtub scene where she tells Oliver exactly what she\u2019s decided she thinks of him. And Pike is perhaps the picture\u2019s MVP, uproarious in her alarming yet oblivious cruelty. As ever, her comic timing is just sharp as a tack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then it goes off the rails. A big event hits, around the 100-minute mark, that leaves Fennell with nowhere to go for the rest of the bloated running time, and it\u2019s such a plot-stopper that her attempts to resume the familial satire play as so broad, they verge on cloying \u2014 in addition to severely undercutting the genuine emotion of what Keoghan is doing immediately thereafter. They simply can\u2019t coexist, and the rest of Saltburn<\/em> plays out with similarly jarring whiplash. By the time she gets to the final scene, its full frontal male nudity smacks less of boundary-pushing sensuality than desperation. Instead, it feels like one more gimmick \u2014 from a film (and a filmmaker) who\u2019s run out of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Saltburn” is out Friday in select theaters, and in theaters everywhere November 22.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/saltburn2-1024x577.jpg\")
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