‘Saltburn’ writer-director Emerald Fennell on her shocking film: ‘Let’s worry about what makes us feeling something’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
Since it debuted at the Telluride Film Festival last August, few films have generated more discussion on social media than “Saltburn.” The new project from Oscar-winning writer and director Emerald Fennell has captured the fascination of TikTok users, as videos adjacent to the film have consistently gone viral on the platform to the tune of more than 4 billion views, Deadline reported. On Amazon Prime Video, where “Saltburn” premiered in late December after its theatrical run, Fennell’s follow-up to “Promising Young Woman” has dominated the charts over the last few weeks to become one of Amazon’s biggest streaming debuts ever. Even the “Saltburn” soundtrack has hit: the 2002 song “Murder on the Dancefloor” reached the top of the Spotify viral U.S. singles chart thanks to its prominent placement in the final moments of the film, when star Barry Keoghan dances in the nude to the Sophie Ellis-Bextor track.
For Fennell, the response is proof she and the “Saltburn” team aren’t alone in their love of the world she created for the explicit drama about love, sex, obsession, and desire.
“That’s what’s so wonderful about making this film is that for the people who connect to it, who get it – they feel how I feel about it, how Barry feels about it, which is that they’re gonna go to the grave too, we’re all gonna go together,” Fennell tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview, referencing a wild scene in the film when Keoghan’s character attempts to have sex with a freshly dug grave. “We’re all just gonna f–king jump off the cliff together and that’s just the thrill of it. If makes me feel something, if we all watch something and go, ‘F–k’ in the room – you know, all of us – then that’s all you can do. It’s not gonna work for everyone. … But let’s worry about what makes us feel something. What makes us want to talk, what makes us argue with each other and that’s the joy of filmmaking. I’m so I’m just so grateful that I got to make this film and that so many people just love it so much.”
Set primarily in 2007, “Saltburn” focuses on a young Oxford student named Oliver Quick (Keoghan) who befriends an obscenely wealthy classmate named Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) and gets invited to spend the summer at Felix’s family home, the titular Saltburn. Once there, Oliver quickly ingratiates himself to Felix’s family – including Felix’s mother Elspeth (Rosamund Pike) and sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) – all while harboring an obsession for Felix that has dire consequences.
Fennell has compared her film to a vampire movie and cited as inspirations everything from “Cruel Intentions” to English painter Joshua Reynolds and Italian artist Caravaggio. To account for the blending of tones and references required by her script, Fennell and Oscar-winning cinematographer Linus Sandgren (“La La Land”) chose to shoot the film in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio rather than the traditional anamorphic widescreen.
“The ability to be formal, to make something more painterly, more expressive – it’s much easier to do formal compositions in 1.33:1 than it is with anamorphic,” Fennell explains. “Anamorphic is so wonderful, and it’s how we shot ‘Promising Young Woman’ because that movie was made on a budget, and in a shorter time, it was all about giving it scale, giving it this kind of sense that you’re watching a kind of movie. And with this, it sort of felt like the opposite. We wanted it to feel like a peep show.”
In no better moment does that voyeuristic pursuit shine through than the aforementioned grave scene, which has shocked audiences since its Telluride premiere. Fennell says the sequence and Oliver’s actions – which include stripping off his clothes to writhe on top of the fresh dirt – are foundational to the character she and Keoghan created together.
“The thing about that scene for me is that it’s not about what I think. This film isn’t about characters even, it’s about the audience. And it needed to be shot from far away, and it needed to be as long as it was. Because it’s like Oliver – it is mortifying and devastating and sexy and cringe-making and a really kind of honest act of grief and regret, and all of those things and it’s also kind of an attempt to get something back,” Fennell says. “This is not a restrained film, I have no interest in subtlety or restraint…. But there are moments where you need to be restrained. And that is one of those moments.”
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