• Saltburn

2/10/24 (Sat)

This wild takeoff on The Talented Mr. Ripley is more interested in shocking the audience than offering a coherent story or characters. The film is set in 2006. Oliver, a plain-looking student at Oxford claiming to be from a poor and broken family, gains the friendship of his hunky classmate Felix, who takes pity on him. When Felix learns that Oliver’s father has died, he invites Oliver to his family’s vast country home for the summer. Oliver is welcomed by Felix’s innocently snooty parents and loose sister as well as her eccentric friend. Felix’s bitchy half-black cousin, also a classmate, is sponging off the family and views Oliver, rightly as it turns out, as a potential threat to his privileged position. Oliver’s stay devolves into drunken parties, drugs, sex and several untimely deaths. We realize in the end that Oliver is not what he seems: he is exposed as having a perfectly respectable background, causing Felix to turn against him, and has plotted from the beginning to insinuate himself into Felix’s life and take over the family home and all its wealth. He succeeds through a mix of flattery, physicality and murder.

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