“This could easily have been set in Hollywood,” Emerald Fennell said of her new film Saltburn, during a post-screening Q&A at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.
01.09.2023 - 06:55 / variety.com
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic It’s the moment of truth for Emerald Fennell, whose “Promising Young Woman” established the actor-turned-auteur (last seen playing pregnant doll Midge in “Barbie”) as a formidable new filmmaking talent. Building on the barbed sensibility she established with “Killing Eve,” the writer-director’s zeitgeist-throttling feature debut lured audiences like a bright red candy apple, leaving them with plenty to debate after the cyanide-laced sugar high wore off.
But what exactly did that pop provocation promise, in terms of where Fennell’s wicked-sinister imagination might go next? Surely something more satisfying than “Saltburn.” But first the positive, as the shortcomings will swiftly make themselves apparent: A tall drink of Evelyn Waugh spiked with Patricia Highsmith bitters, Fennell’s sophomore feature boasts a distinctive, splashy look for its demented critique of pomp and privilege among England’s elitist upper class. Picture Brideshead reduced to ashes by Tom Ripley (Saltburn is the name of a terribly posh estate where half the film takes place).
Presented in a nearly square Academy ratio that makes DP Linus Sandgren’s garishly saturated colors and bold, Kubrickian visual sense all the more striking, the pitch-black satire announces its defiant slant via a homoerotic opening montage of one Felix Catton (“Euphoria” stud Jacob Elordi), stupid rich and patrician sexy (as in, all the debutantes want to do him). Felix’s introduction comes courtesy of Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), an instantly pathetic Oxford freshman infatuated with the popular upperclassman.
Oliver insists that the story, which is bound to end badly, is more complicated than everyone has been led to believe. Except, it isn’t.
.“This could easily have been set in Hollywood,” Emerald Fennell said of her new film Saltburn, during a post-screening Q&A at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.
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Sofia Coppola’s new film about Priscilla Presley is earning rave reviews.
The tears flowed for Priscilla Presley following the world premiere of Sofia Coppola’s biopic, “Priscilla”, in Venice on Monday.
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TELLURIDE – Let the record show that Emerald Fennell is an utterly fearless filmmaker. I mean, we already knew that to an extent after her audacious debut, “Promising Young Woman,” but to say she’s taken that to another level with her latest extravagant concoction, “Saltburn,” is an understatement of epic proportions.
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TELLURIDE – Let the record show that Emerald Fennell is an utterly fearless filmmaker. I mean, we already knew that to an extent after her audacious debut, “Promising Young Woman,” but to say she’s taken that to another level with her latest extravagant concoction, “Saltburn,” is an understatement of epic proportions.
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