Director Emerald Fennell On Saltburn: “All Of Us Should Want To Both Sleep With and Murder Every Character”
Academy award-winning filmmaker Emerald Fennell, the fastidious director and writer of Promising Young Woman, brings us a beautifully wicked tale of privilege and desire in Saltburn. In this upcoming psychological thriller, student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is struggling to find his place at Oxford University. He quickly finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Eldori) who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling English estate, for an exciting summer never to be forgotten.
The buzz deriving from festivals is making the anticipation for the film unparalleled. In a press conference for Saltburn, Fennell expresses that this film was made for cinemas, which can be proven through various festivals and early screenings, describing that “every room, every different screening, the response has been so different. We’ve had screaming, squealing, squirming, gasping, disgust, despair, love, and hate. It’s really exciting when you can kind of feel that visceral response.” Fennell has made a masterpiece, some might say, and the dynamic cast she assembled only aided in this advance accolade, from Jacob Elordi, who has had a smashing breakthrough year in films like the riveting Priscilla, to Barry Keoghan, the young Irish film star seen in The Batman and the Oscar-nominated The Banshees of Inisherin, and, of course, the captivating Academy Award-nominated Rosamund Pike. Fennell took the opportunity to talk about her star-studded, multi-talented cast, explaining that Keoghan “is a person who the closer you look, the further away he gets. It’s the most brilliant, brilliant talent. We needed [the character] Oliver to be incredibly enigmatic, incredibly alluring, and incredibly complicated.” Fennell goes on to say that Pike is the “funniest, most gifted comic actress in the world,” which audiences may not expect given her terrifying performance in the 2014 thriller Gone Girl.
When asked what it was about the character, Oliver, that spoke to Fennell as a writer and creative, she answered, matter of factly, “I think that Oliver feels incredibly relatable to me.” She went on to explain that the film is really about how we’re all living in a world where we can only look at each other through screens. We’re constantly voyeuristic, absorbing things that can’t see us back. Oliver as a character represents that want and need we all feel in this new world that has been built around us, that we can’t escape. Fennell shared, “Oliver seems to be all of us. Yes, he’s an outsider. Yes, he’s a person driven by love and desire and all of those things. But, he’s also trying to scratch an itch that just cannot be sated.”
Saltburn is a complex story with textures and layers and one of those is that the story is set in specifically in the year 2006 — the year producer Josey McNamara was attending university. McNamara excitedly described that there were certain elements that made the 2006 setting crucial, such as smoking indoors. McNamara reflected, “I think it was the last year you were allowed to smoke indoors. So there are these little things that we could add [to the film] that really built the fabric of the movie.” Fennell then added that the year allowed them to play on the satirical aspect of the film. While it’s not necessarily a “period drama,” it is. The story being set in 2006 enabled Fennell to create a story that feels a bit distant to viewers. “Part of the story is set in the summer of 2007 and that was exactly 15 years from when we were filming it,” Fennell described, “and the thing about 15 years ago is that it doesn’t look glamorous. No matter how rich, how beautiful you are, 15 years ago, wherever you are in time, it’s not back in fashion, so it’s not cool yet. And it’s not close enough [in time] that it looks the same. It gives it a very humanizing effect when you see the most beautiful person in the world with a Livestrong bracelet and a Carpe Diem tattoo. And, when you’re talking about these supernaturally beautiful rich people, you do need to add that kind of like humanizing quality.”
To close the conversation on the meticulous detail that went into the creation and filming of Saltburn, Fennell added how she wants people to feel when leaving theaters, which is (drumroll, please) — “all of us should want to both sleep with and murder every character.” Sign me up!
Saltburn will release in select theaters November 17 and in theaters everywhere November 22.
