Overheated 'Saltburn' mistakes sour for sassy
MGM
Mix two parts “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” one part “Call Me By Your Name,” and a couple splashes of the recent, disappointing season of “You,” and you’ll get “Saltburn,” an expensively manufactured vase that writer-director Emerald Fennell forgot to fill.
Blending his Oscar-nominated desperation to be loved from “The Banshees of Inisherin” with his quiet menace from “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” Barry Keoghan stars as Oliver, an outsider at Oxford in the early 2000s rescued from social desolation after an act of kindness toward Felix (Jacob Elordi of “Priscilla”). Tall, handsome, and obscenely wealthy, Felix is everything Oliver isn’t, and he’s remarkably generous toward the shy guy who loans Felix his bike after a flat tire. So when Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer at the titular family home, Oliver becomes the eager yet unavoidably exposed sardine in the caviar, privy to a massive estate, unlimited resources, and the phony, gossipy toxicity of Felix’s mother (Rosamund Pike).
Obviously, Oliver is Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) here, and Felix is Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), with Felix’s cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe) in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s role and ruthlessly targeting Oliver as an unwelcome leech from the start. The talented, slippery Keoghan and Elordi certainly capture a dynamic of need and openness, an infatuation that burns too strongly to last forever. But Fennell, who did not deserve to win Best Original Screenplay for the intriguing but misguided “Promising Young Woman,” has even more narrative difficulty with a very different and yet somewhat related story of a person dealing with their private issues in a unique and extreme manner. Despite its juicy (and quite derivative) setup, “Saltburn” has no real curiosity about its characters beyond superficial notions of envy and desire, with Oliver ultimately not feeling like a real person and Elordi delivering an enormously charismatic turn despite the film leaving Felix’s personality a bit unfinished. Meanwhile, Fennell slathers the proceedings in so much cynicism that any attempt at edge just feels like the filmmaker repeatedly jabbing viewers with a dull object. She also seems to think that “some rich people are oblivious snobs” is a new, ground-shaking insight.
Or maybe she doesn’t; the predictable, over-the-top direction “Saltburn” takes in its final section suggests a desperate attempt to break from the familiar by any means necessary, which is not really a great way to approach a story. Yeah, you’ll be talking about a couple moments in particular — but mostly focusing on how no amount of handsome photography or glitzy parties or supposedly shocking imagery can turn this “Saltburn” summer into anything but a splashy bummer.
C-
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