In Emerald Fennell's latest film, you're cordially invited to Saltburn, an aristocratic family's sprawling estate – and the site of a twisted comedy-psychodrama that will have you hanging on every word. The film that left viewers divided over Christmas, Saltburn chronicles the journey of Oxford University student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), initially a fish out of water, who gets accepted into the inner circle of handsome, immensely-privileged Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). The action intensifies when Oliver receives an invitation to spend the summer with his new friend at Saltburn, the Catton's family mansion – a world which is fairytale-like and nightmarish in equal measures.
With a cast that includes Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan, Richard E. Grant and Alison Oliver (and Margot Robbie behind the scenes as an executive producer), Fennell's much-awaited second film (following her Academy Award winning Promising Young Woman) is a gripping watch that will have you chronically unsure whether to laugh, cry or gawp wide-eyed at the screen.
A prayer for those who watched the bathtub scene with family over Christmas.
And that's Emerald's intention, apparently. The director – who also wrote and co-produced the film – says: 'I don't mind making somebody deeply uncomfortable', adding that all she seeks in an audience is a ‘natural, primal response' to what's before them. In conversation with GLAMOUR, Emerald goes into detail about following in what she calls the ‘inherently female' tradition of Gothic narratives; her boundaries around portraying violence on screen; and why, despite being from a privileged background herself, she very much empathises with her protagonist Oliver's feeling of being an ‘outsider’.
GLAMOUR: In a statement ahead of Saltburn's release, you said, ‘I wanted to make a film about love… a romance and horror since they're one and the same.' Can you unpack that statement? Why is romance and horror one and the same?
Emerald Fennell: So, in the Gothic tradition, a romance is always a horror too. I suppose that's because the Gothic is about our relationship with the things that we want and how it is invariably dangerous and complicated. I wanted to make something about how revulsion and anger are just as much a part of desire as love and affection.
What I love about Promising Young Women and also this film is its dark, twisted quality. Often, you're compared to male directors and artists who shared these qualities, like Bret Easton Ellis and Roald Dahl – I know that you personally identify with Alfred Hitchcock as well. What do you think that a more female perspective has to offer to these darker narratives?
That's so interesting, as I think of the Gothic as actually being an inherently female thing, like the Bronte sisters and Hilary Mantel and Patricia Highsmith [author of The Talented Mr Ripley book]. I think there's a dark, specifically female thing as well. Because when you're writing about sex and power, those things are experienced differently if you're a woman. The writers and filmmakers that I love the most tend to write or make things that are very, very dark, but in a very beautiful way. Sofia Coppola is a great example of the modern American Gothic. There's no one darker, but everything she makes is so tactile, beautiful and alluring that the darkness is like a knife wrapped in satin. The women that I admire are working in those super dark places.
What about violence? I personally find it difficult to see a lot of blood and gore on screen, but in Saltburn, even though there's violence, there's a restrained, artful quality about it. What would you say your boundaries are with portraying onscreen violence?
I don't have any boundaries, I don't think. When it comes to anything, it's always about what your purpose is. It's never about the thing itself, rather, what's the purpose of doing this thing or showing this thing. In Promising Young Woman, the awful thing that happened to Nina is never shown, it's only heard. And I think it's so devastating. I would never want to show something like that. And it would never have felt right. But then sometimes it's necessary to see the violence, in the same way nudity can be used in necessary ways and unnecessary ways. It's always why, rather than what. It's ‘Why is this going to be the best way of showing this feeling?’ I personally don't think that there should be anything that's off bounds. It's just about whether it's justifiable. It's about the purpose of this film, whatever it is. For instance, in Saltburn, there's Barry Keoghan's nude dance to Murder on the Dancefloor, which I worked on with an amazing editor, Victoria Boydell. It's something so joyful, post-coital, euphoric and camp – all of the things that song is. I don't mind feeling uncomfortable or rather I do mind it, but I'm interested in it. I don't mind making somebody deeply uncomfortable. That's an exposing thing.
What makes it exposing?
It puts us in those liminal spaces we've tried to shut away. Given how binary everything is these days, we don't like to be made to feel lots of opposing things at once. A good example in this film is something that makes us feel disgusted and turned on. That is a very common part of desire. It's something that we all respond to that maybe we're not even aware of ourselves: a certain power dynamic and element of disgust and revulsion in this type of desire. There are moments in this film where, in a movie theatre audience, you will have some people laughing, some people recoiling, some people screaming, some people angry and some people shushing each other. The audience is both engaged with the film and each other. You want that kind of communal experience where people are experiencing things differently. That's why comedy and horror are always so interesting together because they give you a natural, primal response. But there's another bit between those things that's like, I don't know if I should be laughing, I don't know why I find this funny. Everything about this is cruel or demeaning or sad or whatever it is, but I'm laughing. Then there's a complicity too. That's why film is so amazing because it's contained and you can have all these experiences.
Your protagonist, Oliver, is an outsider to the society that he enters. Comparatively, you're not an outsider to the aristocratic world portrayed in the film. You went to boarding school at Marlborough and Oxford University – you've spoken about growing up with privilege in interviews before. Is that outsider quality something you somehow relate to nonetheless?
I mean, don't we all? Don't you? I mean, I don't know any person who isn't to some degree engaging in an awful lot of voyeurism in other people's lives, in desiring other people's lives and other people's experiences and other people's bodies and other people's food and children and clothes and all of that stuff. I'm not immune to wanting things that I can't have. I'm not immune to the feeling of self-revulsion that then becomes a yearning for harm on the object of desire. That's a cycle that all of us who live in the world and on the internet are familiar with. So there's that, but also, we still live in a casually misogynistic culture. No matter what your situation, you'll always have that slight feeling of outsider-ness. And, if you're a writer, you are always a voyeur. So every person in the world thinks they're slightly outside. Unless you're with your family watching telly. Everywhere else, I don't know what it is to feel like completely at ease all the time.
What about your popular-at-Oxford, aristocratic character, Felix Catton, whose family home is the Saltburn estate? Doesn't he feel like he's on the inside of this world?
He doesn't have any self-awareness at all. I don't think he interrogates his feelings about anything. But if he were pushed, I'm sure he would say that he was a bit embarrassed by it all. He would think of himself as above it, beyond it even. Nobody thinks that they're basic – that they're completely squarely in the world that they were born in or live in. I've never met anyone so self-assured that they're not, that they're not slightly questioning how they came to be where they are. The outsider is universal. If you're sentient, you feel apart from others because we're solitary, because we can only see inside our own bodies and minds.
Saltburn is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
