Saltburn (2023 | UK | 127 minutes | Emerald Fennell)

The best thing Emerald Fennell does with her sharp satiric follow-up to A Promising Young Woman is giving the always-sublime weirdo Barry Keoghan a whole goddamned movie to finally let his freak flag fly. It’s almost certainly the horniest movie I’ve ever seen at Telluride, and has been lodged in my head ever since. In it, she brings a distinctly female gaze to a twisty class comedy about an Oxford scholarship nerd falling in (and in love with) with the college’s landed party people elite through the transformative power of doing a fortuitous favor for a fellow student.

Opening with a sensual flashback montage, we meet Keoghan’s Oliver musing direct-to-camera over whether he loved or was in love with Felix (Jacob Elordi in full golden god sexpot mode, what a year he’s having between this and Priscilla). Numerous valid comparisons to early-2000s Abercrombie aesthetic have been made, but you really have to see Linus Sandgren’s work to fully appreciate the immersion. Unlike the expansive canvas at his disposal for similarly-transportive in Babylon, the boxy 4:3 aspect conveys an insularity that’s all the more effective when it’s fully lit up with excess. It’s also friendlier for all of the memes that are bound to flourish once more people have seen it over school breaks.

The story whips through Oliver’s gray and lonely early misfit days of college. When that favor finally gives him a foothold out of a club of himself and one other loser, he never looks back. His entry into drinks with the cool kids and raucous parties is like this generation’s emergence from a humble house that crashed over the rainbow in Oz. Elordi plays Felix as a sweetie who takes Oliver under his wing and the early aspects of their camaraderie rival the dreamiest falling-for-you montages committed to the screen. In part, because they’re shot from the vantage of at least one character who maybe probably definitely wants it to be more-than-friendship. Oliver only has eyes for magnetic Felix and the camera leaves no question as to why. From the vibes on the press tour, it’s almost as if the SAG strike ended just so the Elordi-Keoghan chemistry could soar.

The intrigue, oddity, rivalries, and familial intrigue really ramps up when sad-sack Oliver parlaying his unlikely friendship into an extended summer stay at Felix’s astonishingly posh English country estate, the titular Saltburn. There, the social hierarchy is as spiky as an updated Heathers with the erotic transformative tenor or the Talented Mister Ripley. There, we meet Rosamund Pike and Richard E Grant as hilariously clueless aristocrat parents in some of their very funniest roles. Although she’ll have a more lauded performance in Maestro, it’s fun to see Carey Mulligan ham it up here as another houseguest alongside Archie Madekwe (vicious cousin Farleigh Start), both of whose positions in the pecking order become imperiled. The early aughties indie-rock soundtrack slaps. The production and costume design are outrageously accomplished, from dreary Oxford to the excesses of wealth. The party sequences are dazzling. You can feel the summer sun cooking everyone’s brains. Jacob Elordi shows pit. Keoghan won’t let you think of bathtubs the same. It’s one hell of a summer and you’ll never forget the imagery conjured by some of its boldest moves.

As with A Promising Young Woman, Fennell’s script is maybe too pleased with its own twisty cleverness, probably doesn’t always cut as deeply as it thinks it does, and definitely explains far more than necessary. But as much as I have quibbles with the ending, it’s all Keoghan’s show and his commanding performance as a slippery chaos agent cannot be denied. Figuring out exactly what his Oliver really wants as he plays among the ultra-rich in increasingly perverse fashion is a constant voyeuristic thrill. It is impossible to look away from his calculated longing and the lengths he’s willing to go to get everything he desires. Even when it falters, there’s nothing quite like a holiday at Saltburn.