Film Review: Keoghan is a 'revelation', while Cork actress is 'fantastic' in Saltburn

A still from Saltburn, featuring
RELEASED in 2021, Promising Young Woman was Emerald Fennell’s dark, challenging, and bitingly truthful response to the #MeToo movement. It was nominated for five Oscars, with Fennell taking home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
The film marked Fennell as a singular talent. Her sense of humour is whip-smart and dark, and she isn’t afraid to be provocative.
Her latest film, Saltburn, has secured Barry Keoghan a seat at the next Oscars. He gives a phenomenal, risky performance.
It is the early 2000s, and Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) starts his first term at Oxford. He is from a poor family with a troubled history. He has a rough accent, far removed from the marbled speech of his fellow students.
Like any college, Oxford has cliques, but the Oxford elite is something else. The children of millionaires and the gentrified live in a bubble of wealth and ignorance. These young adults don’t usually notice the people who don’t fit in, but they see Oliver. They are allergic to his scholarship status.
None of this stops Oliver wanting to break into the inner circle. And who can blame him?
The elite has no worries; they drink champagne midweek, and by birth or good fortune, they are attractive.
Felix (Jacob Elordi) is the most privileged of the bunch. He is also gorgeous and can have anyone he wants. Oliver watches him from a distance. He is attracted to him, but is it his wealth or a sexual thing, or does Oliver want to be like Felix?
When the two have a chance encounter, Oliver does Felix a favour but doesn’t look for anything in return. Felix isn’t used to having people be kind for no reason; his elite world is cutthroat and oblivious to others misfortune.

They form a friendship, and at first, the rest of Felix’s gang aren’t too happy. Who wants the scholarship kid in their group? Felix is the leader of the pack, and his word is gospel, so they tolerate Oliver; some even learn to like him. Farleigh (Archie Madekwe) is the exception. He is Felix’s cousin whose position in the family fortune is tenuous, so he takes it out on Oliver.
Felix is there for Oliver when he suffers a tragedy, and their friendship grows. It is hard to tell if Felix sees Oliver as his charity chase or if he appreciates having a “normal friendship” for once. Whatever it is, the bond is strong. It is highly charged and even a little sexual.
When the summer break arrives, Felix decides to bring Oliver home with him to his family estate. Oliver has no idea what he is getting into. The house, Saltburn, is big enough to be a palace. The stately home once accommodated Henry VIII and is run by servants.
Felix’s family are so wealthy, so titled and entitled that they haven’t a clue how the real world works. His father, Sir James (Richard E Grant) and mother, Elsbeth (Rosamund Pike), see Oliver as a plaything, and his sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) is both interested and repulsed by him.
As the summer becomes a blur of lazy days and champagne, things become heated between several of the occupants of Saltburn and the heady summer leads to some dark and twisted places.
Saltburn is debauched. I don’t get shocked easily anymore, but I was stunned. Be ready to be scandalised. If you are expecting Downton Abbey, stay away. This is Brideshead Revisited gone to the dark side; the comparison to Brideshead is so strong that Fennell has made sure to leave a wink and a nod to Evelyn Waugh’s novel.
In reality, not every rich kid at Oxford is a rotter, but Fennell adds farce to her work. She is from the elite; the Saltburn estate is her real family home.
She knows the aristocratic world and is ripping holes in it with delicious, twisted aplomb.
Cork city’s Alison Oliver is fantastic as brittle, messed-up Venetia. Pike is hilarious; she will make people howl. Elrodi is brilliant as the one semi-sensible member of his family. He knows when to be cold and when to wheel out the charm.
As for Keoghan, the actor is a revelation.
We already know what he can do, but this takes him to another level. I have goosebumps just thinking of his performance.
The film takes a wild leap in the final act that doesn’t quite work and stops me from giving it five stars, but until the end, Saltburn is wickedly good. It is salacious, provocative, deliciously twisted and safely places Keoghan as one of Hollywood’s best.
Saltburn, in cinemas tomorrow, Cert: 16 ****