Emerald Fennel, born in 1985, is a director, screenwriter and also involved in the production of what is already called a cult film: Saltburn.
She’s British, blonde, has blue eyes and an angel face with a resume that makes Hollywood stars jealous. Yeah, because the 38-year-old with the reassuring smile is known for co-writing the Killing Eve series, for playing Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown, for writing and directing A Promising Woman for which she won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and for the most attentive, for even starring in Barbie in the role of Midge.
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It seems that after the Oscar the eyes were all on this new film and from the reactions of those who saw the film let’s say that Emerald, the director with the emerald tones, flooded them with obsession, paranoia, sex, and wealth those eyes, with a film that leaves the spectators stunned, incredulous, perhaps a little frightened sometimes disgusted, but totally ecstatic.
But why does Saltburn like it so much? Here are 5 reasons.
The setting
2006 years, but in Oxford, the university par excellence the oldest in the Anglo-Saxon world where time stands still, and has always stopped. Huge libraries from the Gothic style, drapes to the large windows, fine carpets and a refectory that looks like that of Harry Potter. The second location is the summer home of one of the protagonists Felix. A huge medieval castle, consisting of countless halls, halls, gardens and ponds attached. In the blink of an eye the film becomes so timeless. It could be a story set in 1800 as one of 2030.
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The two protagonists
Felix, the handsome, rich one, who has all the girls at his feet, but kind, honest, sweet, sensitive, and needy Oliver, the one who won the scholarship, who doesn’t have the money to pay for a beer, the shy one, the one who seems harmless, invisible but that so harmless is not. The two stereotypes par excellence: the strong and the weak, the sun and the moon, and what happens, as in any good writing is the reversal of roles.
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Obsession
The real protagonist of this film is the obsession that becomes the drive that turns into mental illness and that, like a seductive actress, plays different roles hiding behind friendship then gratitude, then to education, then to love to return from where it had started without ever dying out until the end and beyond.
The body
It is seen as a tool, as a means. Felix uses his beauty with banality, without noticing it, the mother played by an amazing Rosamund Pike does the same thing, Felix’s sister also. Their body is a tool to get or get everything they want, a sports car to clean and show off on sunny days, there is no respect, there is no love in those bodies. On the contrary, Olivier demonstrates that he uses the body with all of himself, without fear, without embarrassment. Licking water and cum after Felix masturbated in the bathtub, masturbating Felix’s sister during the menstrual cycle, fucking the cool ground where he was just buried... We can’t tell you who. That would be too much. And dancing naked to Murder on the Dancefloor.
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The labyrinth
The function of the labyrinth in religion is to be a symbol of a path of atonement. In psychology it is defined as the metaphor of a problem in which there is no way out. In architecture in the Middle Ages had cabalistic and occult interpretations and with the Renaissance becomes a simple fun to entertain those who traveled. The labyrinth is the symbol of the film and tells with a single image the whole plot. From the suffering to the fatigue that Oliver had to endure to follow his obsession, from the black and psychological drama between the two protagonists and not only, up to the fun game of roles that change and follow each other throughout the film.
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Saltburn talks about what we’re going through today without telling us he’s doing it. Use obsession, bodies, disgust, coldness, cynicism, mud, fake seduction and hunger to remind us of how miserable we can be in the face of death, despair and madness.
Illustration by Gloria Dozio - Acrimònia Studios
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