I thought I was done with new films for a while but my sister recommended 2023's Saltburn. So I watched it last night and I was glad I did. It's sort of a Dark Academia Kind Hearts and Coronets. It kind of loses focus about two thirds of the way through but it's a pleasant diversion.
Barry Keoghan plays Oliver Quick, a new student at Oxford who's shy and awkward and watches the popular Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) with smouldering intensity.
He tells us in narration how much he wants Felix. There's an apparently chance meeting on the way to school and slowly Felix starts to take Oliver under his wing. Eventually he invites Oliver to his family's lavish manor, Saltburn.
Writer/director Emerald Fennell reveals a gossipy comedy from there as we meet a cast of dim-witted, spoiled rich people who inhabit the place. The matriarch played by Rosamund Pike with her wasted friend Carey Mulligan ponder the location of Liverpool--the patriarch, played by Richard E. Grant, informs them Liverpool is "north."
One thing I like is how things that you'd usually take for just thoughtless fantasy elements end up being clues, like how Oliver is in much better health and is much better educated than his supposedly poor background would suggest.
The tone of the film and Oliver's obsession with Felix strongly reminded me of reading The Secret History and I see there's debate online over whether Saltburn counts as Dark Academia since most of the story is not set at school. I say, the shoe fits.
Saltburn is available on Amazon Prime.
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