Saltburn gay
I'm so glad Saltburn wasn't my introduction to existence bisexual
Films and popular society set norms that impact how people think about queer people, class and where we come from.
But can we really separate the art from the artist in an age where the vastly privileged create thevast majority of our cultural content?
When I first watched Saltburn, it made me uneasy - but it wasn’t immediately clear why. I would later realise how joyful I was that it wasn’t my introduction to anything queer.
I quickly went to see what critics said about it, though.
It seems that director Emerald Fenell’s class background is significant in explaining the classist content of the film. At the launch of the film, I was excited to watch a character I could relate to in Oliver - but his personal story turned out to all be a lie down. The Polyester podcast noticed this too, saying that as the film progressed it left the horrible aftertaste of witnessing a narrative that was “punching down”.
This film seemed to be an exercise in upper-class vanity, portraying a fantasy of the proles coming for them and their wealth. It felt significant to see Oliver’s character regurgitate the trope
The college movie has historically been straight-coded. In North America, they tend to follow frat boys and their relationship with boobs and beer. In Britain, these films are, the odd exception (The Riot Club) aside, pretty but desperately uptight. Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, the new show from the maker of Promising Young Woman starring Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi, feels different. Her campus movie dredges up something curious: the strange and obsessive byproducts of pent-up testosterone; of male brotherhood in extremity. Or, of what happens when straight male friendship gets so intense that the involved parties start acting a little gay, fancy that viral video of the topless guys in their back garden smashing garden chairs on each other’s backs.
In Saltburn, Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is a working class male child studying at Oxford University on a scholarship. He is book smart but socially witless and struggles to make friends. From afar he watches Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), the sun at the centre of the school’s social circle, who every teen wants to kiss and every boy wants to be friends with. He’s handsome, aristocratic and has an eyebrow piercing, and so Oliver, n
‘Saltburn’ is a twisted story of class and attraction
“Saltburn,” writer/director Emerald Fennell’s track up to her Oscar-winning “Promising Young Woman,” is a delicious cuckoo-in-the-nest story. The dazzling pre-credit sequence sets the stage; Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) claims that he “wasn’t in love with” Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) — even though everyone thought he was. Images of Felix, lying shirtless in the sun, kissing a female classmate, or just smiling, emphasize how handsome and appealing Felix is. (Fennell and cinematographer Linus Sandgren objectify and fetishize Elordi in ways that will make women and homosexual men swoon).
Oliver recounts his experiences with Felix, which form the spine of the film, a twisted story of class, attraction, and yes, murder.
The two young men meet at Oxford as part of the class of 2006. Felix is a member of the cool crowd, which includes his lgbtq+ cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe). In contrast, Oliver is a scholarship student whose only friend is Jake (Will Gibson) a math whiz/geek. After Oliver bikes past Felix, who is waylaid with a planar tire, Felix befriends “Ollie” and folds him into his clique. Jake, possessive, warns Ollie,
Spoilers!
Just to give this film its gay creds right off the bat, there's a scene in which Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) espies Felix (Jacob Elordi), masturbating in the bath. When Felix leaves their joint bathroom, Oliver, watching the water (and other stuff) drain, bends down and drinks some of the spunk-enhanced bath water. It's a unique scene in a movie that could have been a contender -- but isn't quite.
Saltburnhas been called Brideshead Revisitedmeets The Talented Mr. Ripley, and that's accurate, up to a point. Productive class scholarship student Oliver arrives at Oxford in 2006 and encounters aristocratic Felix. Very much the outsider, Oliver has no friends except for a quite mad maths genius, whose outburst in the dining hall at the start of the clip lets us know that madness lies this way. After a number of encounters with Felix Catton, Oliver is invited to Saltburn, the Catton estate. We meet the eccentric inhabitants of Saltburn, launch with Paul Rhys as Duncan the butler. Rhys, one of the excellent British actors (I saw him play Uncle Vanya on stage), seems to be channelling Bela Lugosi in Night Mon
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