SALTBURN (2023) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Emerald Fennell
Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Archie Madekwe
Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver,
Carey Mulligan, Paul Rhys, Reece Shearsmith
A devious dark comedy about an impoverished scholarship student who's invited to spend the summer holiday at the posh estate of a much-admired classmate. There are three or four turns in this that not only don't go where you expect them to, they go places you maybe haven't seen before. Barry Keoghan's at the center of it all, proving without a doubt that his Oscar-nominated performance in "The Banshees of Inisherin" was no fluke. Starting out, his character, Oliver, is a socially awkward, fish-out-of-water new kid facing his first term at Oxford. But he's smart and clever and he catches on quick, and his eyes don't miss a thing. He'd be easy too underestimate, and as it turns out, that would be a big mistake. The upper-crust family who take him in - Sir James (Richard E. Grant), wife Elspeth (Rosamund Pike) and daughter Venetia (Alison Oliver) - cover the spectrum from merely eccentric to barking mad, and that doesn't even take in houseguest "Poor Dear Pamela" (Carey Mulligan, who doesn't get nearly enough screen time). From the absurdly ornate opening titles on, Emerald Fennell's direction is both delicate and in-your-face, a high-wire act you've got to be bold to attempt and skilled to pull off. But it all comes back to Keoghan and those knowing, inscrutable eyes. If there was any chance you'd forget him in this, what he does at the end should take care of that.