SPOILER alert: This article contains spoilers for “Saltburn,” in theaters now.
In 2006, I was an English major at Oxford alongside “Saltburn” director Emerald Fennell. While there was a peripheral overlap in our social circles, as far as I remember we never officially met. Like the protagonists in her new film, we existed in the same orbit but our experiences at Oxford could not have been further apart.
So I wasn’t entirely surprised to see Fennell’s dark satire get some flack since its release, particularly in the U.K., for failing to adequately skewer the upper classes while depicting scholarship kid Oliver Quick (played by Barry Keoghan) as a vampiric con artist. His mark, the blue-blooded Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), is kind-hearted and guileless, a cross between Princess Diana and Harry Enfield’s comic creation Tim Nice But Dim.
Even when he realizes he’s been deceived, Felix behaves with impeccable politeness towards Oliver’s mother before honorably ferrying Oliver back to Saltburn, the Cattons’ country estate, where he gently asks the interloper to leave. By contrast, Oliver is at one point shown with blood literally dripping from his mouth. No wonder the film’s been described by Dazed as “a satire that never bares its claws” while London’s Evening Standard newspaper called it “profoundly anti-upward mobility.”
None of which is to say “Saltburn” is a bad movie. On the contrary, it’s a slickly directed romp with gorgeous cinematography, great comic moments (especially from Rosamund Pike as Felix’s socialite mother Elspeth) and a shocking twist. Fennell elicits brilliant performances from her cast, particularly Keoghan and Elordi. But critics are right that “Saltburn” whitewashes the uglier side of the upper classes. Maybe it’s because, like Elspeth, Fennell has a “complete and utter horror of ugliness.” Or maybe it’s because she herself is one of them.
For Fennell is the daughter of society jeweler Theo Fennell, whose clients include Elton John and Madonna. Nicknamed the King of Bling, Theo went to Eton (the same school as Princes William and Harry) while his daughter attended Marlborough, where she was a few years above Princess Eugenie and a few years below Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge. At Oxford, she was part of a rarefied — and thus inevitably “cool” — social set whose family names I recognized from gossip columns and history books… Balfour, Frost, von Bismarck, Guinness, Shaffer. I was once introduced to a contemporary, whose last name was Roosevelt-Morgan, with the whisper: “She’s that Morgan but not that Roosevelt” — which I interpreted to mean she was descended from the banking dynasty but not the U.S. president.
By contrast, I arrived at Oxford as the state-educated daughter of Soviet emigrees with a borderline unpronounceable last name. By the end of my first year, I was used to seeing people’s eyes glaze over when they asked me the all-important question: “Where did you go to [high] school?” It was crucial information because if they’d heard of the school it meant you were One of Them. If not, their eyes would slide past your shoulder to see if there was anyone more worthwhile to speak to.
In one particularly memorable incident, I found myself seated with two toffs at the Oxford Union bar while they discussed how old they’d been when they were sent to boarding school (six and eight, it turned out). Suddenly one asked me: “How old were you when you started boarding?” It simply didn’t compute that I hadn’t. There’s a similar scene in “Saltburn” when Oliver remarks to a fellow dinner guest, Lady Daphne, that having three sons must be challenging. “Well, no, they’re at school,” she replies as though it’s obvious. “That’s the main thing about school — you hardly ever have to see them.” (Note that in Their parlance you don’t need to make a distinction between “boarding school” and “school” because everyone boards).
While “Saltburn” acknowledges this tribalism, it doesn’t interrogate it. If anything, given the ending, it’s presented as sensible — a way for aristocrats to protect themselves against dangerous interlopers.
The film also sidesteps the sense of entitlement that permeates the upper classes, causing them to behave in ways that “normal” people can’t get away with; the kind of behaviour depicted in Lone Scherfig’s “The Riot Club” or Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall” (both also set in Oxford and depicting the antics of privileged posh boys). In “Saltburn’s” paradigm, it’s the middle classes who are predators, with Oliver sexually imposing himself on Felix’s sister, cousin and even his grave. The worst you can say about Felix is that he’s promiscuous, and even on coke we never see him indulging in the kind of predatory conduct that wasn’t uncommon in the VIP rooms of Oxford’s student bars and clubs.
Although “Saltburn” has been billed as a successor to Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” (and isn’t shy about it: within the first act Felix claims his “rellies” were the inspiration for Waugh’s novels), the British author was scrupulous about depicting the upper classes in all of their cruelty as well as their absurdity. Fennell only ever shows us the latter. Even Elspeth’s barbs about her daughter Venetia’s eating disorder and her friend Pamela’s death are delivered with enough wit to endear her to the audience.
Like Oliver, as an outsider at Oxford I was both fascinated and repulsed by the upper classes, jealous of their moneyed confidence and disdainful of the dogmatic social codes to which they clung. But when the opportunity arose, I couldn’t resist a chance to see them up close. In May 2006, Fennell and I were both involved in a charity fashion show organized by some of Oxford’s toniest students (I’d inveigled my way onto the committee). My task was to persuade make-up artists to lend us their services for free; Fennell got her father to donate some jewelry for the accompanying raffle. As the show drew nearer, select students received silver-embossed invitations in their pigeonholes. The rest were NFI — not fucking invited.
