Saltburn - Emerald Fennell's Satire of the British Upper Classes Serves up Shocks and Laughs

 

Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) Saltburn's Villainous Protagonist, on the lawns of the Estate.

Tell Me What You Want: Irish Actor Barry Keoghan Steals the Show as Saltburn's multifaceted Protagonist

For an otherwise exciting, well-paced movie, the twist at the end of Emerald Fennell's Saltburn is rather disappointing. Human greed at work again. Yawn. But I'll come back to that.

Director and Writer Emerald Fennell has created what is likely to become a cult classic with her movie, the title of which references the lavish British country Estate where half of the film's action takes place.

Saltburn is home of the aristocratic Cattons. We first meet the son, Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) at Oxford University, where he studies, and is admired from afar by Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan). Felix does what you would expect him to - parties, attracts women effortlessly, drinks and dances into all hours of the night with his friends, and lets the trash pile up in his room because cleaning is something you leave for the Maid.

Felix and Oliver meet, seemingly by accident, when Felix's bike has a flat tire and he borrows Oliver's to make it to class. Up until this point in the film, Oliver's best friend on campus is an ultra nerd who at one point yells at Oliver to ask him a numerical sum so that he can prove his genius-like math ability. 

Clearly wanting to move with Felix's set, Oliver gets his wish. Though with a last name like Quick, you've got to believe some foreshadowing is being done.

Oliver gamely puts up with the social humiliations that are part of university life. Including at graduation when Felix's cousin Farleigh Start (Archie Madekwe) make a comment about Oliver almost passing as human in his rented Tuxedo. 

Oliver and Farleigh Start (Archie Madekwe) compare Tuxedos at their Oxford University graduation.

 
After relating a sob story about his home life to Felix, Oliver is soon invited to spend the summer at Saltburn. This is when the story really gets its' wings. We get to see so many sides of Oliver's personality - shy nerd, sly social manipulator, horny, needy creature. You can't take your eyes off of him. 

This is what the film does best. It leaves you guessing until the end about what exactly it is that our unreliable narrator really needs. Does he want to be adopted into the Catton family? Does he want to have sex with Felix (and who could blame him?) 

Or is he just out for the money?

We are introduced to other members of the Catton family as they watch television in a common room. There's Sir James Catton (Richard E. Grant) the Patriarch. Generous, slightly absent minded, odd sense of humour. His wife Elspeth Catton (Rosamund Pike). Her delivery of barbed comments is so good, and so casual. They make for some of the movie's funniest moments.

Venetia Catton (Alison Oliver) Felix's Sister, is a dreamy, moody creature with an unspecified psychological condition. Something that has an effect on her eating habits. She's the most perceptive member of the family.

Cousin Farleigh is also staying at Saltburn for the Summer. He pegs Oliver as a rival, and a potentially dangerous outsider from the start. 

What follows is a game of Oliver's construction set against the backdrop of Summer on the estate. 

The climax occurs at a 'Midsummer Night's Dream' themed birthday party for Oliver on the estate's grounds. By this point Oliver has been exposed to Felix as a liar who made up the sob story about his family (he has two normal looking parents who live in a pleasant house).

Surrounded by all of the pomp, spectacle, and excess, Oliver looks lonely and lost. The people around him who are partying it up stand in stark contrast to this strange person.

Saltburn does a lot as a movie, and much of it well. The cinematography, music, pacing and shock comedy (you will never look at bath time with Rubber Ducky the same way) stand out for me. 

The ending left me cold. The proximity to money and the things it can buy makes Oliver throw any values he has straight out the window. 

"Stranger Danger" indeed, as Venetia Catton aptly puts it near Saltburn's end. When the time is already far too late to do something about said danger.

Indie Director Bruce LaBruce Pokes Fun at the Fashion World and Infidelity with The Affairs of Lidia

Sandro (Drew Dixon), Piero (Sean Ford), and Lidia (Skye Blue) confront each other in a scene from Bruce LaBruce's 'The Affairs of Lidia' where infidelities are revealed.

Bruce LaBruce returns with a satirical Romantic Comedy filled with silly dialog, big ideas, and a thoroughly enjoyable Soundtrack

"Gay, straight, I don't know what it matters anymore." - Piero (Sean Ford)

"What matters is... Fidelity." - Lidia (Skye Blue)

Fidelity (definition from Merriam-Webster's online Dictionary)
Noun

1. a) The quality or state of being faithful

    b) Accuracy in details: Exactness

Canadian Director Bruce LaBruce, who helmed It's Not the Pornographer that is Perverse... (2018) and Saint-Narcisse (2020), among other Art films made a good choice when he decided to use the song I'm Over You by Vomit Heat as the theme for his newest feature film, The Affairs of Lidia. The song's lyrics about being done with an unfaithful partner and the catchy hook serve as a counterpoint to the film's fluffy plot. The last minute and a half of the track is just haunting. It brings to mind the feeling of standing alone in a downpour outside a bar on a hot Summer night after last call, contemplating the world.

I'm Over You is a song about someone washing his hands of a failed relationship. It serves as an emotional undercurrent to the goings on in LaBruce's pornographic satire of the Fashion world. "I'm hiding from you... I was lying to you. Usually dishonesty isn't something that I like to deal with... I'm over you," croons Nils Herzogenrath. The lyrics resonate with me.

In The Affairs of Lidia the titular Lidia (Skye Blue), a Model, suspects her Boxer husband Michelangelo (Markus Kage) of being unfaithful. She discreetly follows him one morning and discovers he is having an affair with Sandro (Drew Dixon) a Fashion Photographer. To get revenge Lidia first seduces Sandro, and then strikes up a friendship with Piero (Sean Ford), Sandro's boyfriend, who runs a boutique clothing shop. The dialog that prefaces this entry is from Lidia and Piero's first meeting.

This particular exchange is the film's biggest joke. Only two of the characters in LaBruce's bedroom farce could be described as faithful. The Fashion industry itself is built on superficiality, since clothing projects an image of how we want to be seen by the world. This image changes from season to season, and from one year to another to keep profits flowing. 

So it's the exact opposite of the qualities most attractive in a human being - C squared. This was once described to me as being, "Constant and Consistent." Interacting with the best people (in my experience) is like going to a favourite Restaurant - you know what to expect, and have those expectations met consistently. In other words, the person is reliable and standing on solid foundations.

Which is not the case with LaBruce's characters in The Affairs of Lidia. This is what makes the movie such an effective erotic comedy. All of the lies and infidelities eventually come to a head in a dinner party hosted by Lidia at her loft.

Because The Affairs of Lidia is at its' heart an Art Porn film, acting and dialog are of secondary importance, though still worth mentioning. To call the acting wooden would be generous. It's truly awful on so many levels. In fact, the cast's acting is so bad that it's good.

My favourite scene is a Fashion shoot where Sandro is photographing Xenia (Pascale Drevillon), a transsexual Model. While having Xenia pose Sandro uses a large painted black box as a prop. When asking Xenia to imagine various scenarios he says, "(The box) is your lover. It's the best box you've ever had." And then a moment later, imagining a different scenario, he says, "The box is telling you a secret. What's it telling you my dear?" In a third scenario: "You want to walk the box. How are you going to walk the box?" The scene's acting and dialog revel in their absurdity while playfully mocking the idea of Fashion.

A word about LaBruce's choice of cast to end this entry. While many are familiar names in the adult film industry, the casting of American Sean Ford stands out. Over the years, he has taken on the role of intellectual Porn Star. Back in 2020 he was featured in a wonderful interview in Interview magazine where he discussed the importance of intimacy.

Ford was also the Model for British Artist Stuart Sandford's statue work Adlocutio, which is based on 3D scans of Ford. The piece is rather tongue-in-cheek because the word adlocutio comes from Latin, and refers to an address from an Emperor or General to his assembled troops. The figure's outstretched right hand is meant to signal power and authority, as well as divinity and devotion. In Sandford's piece the naked Ford is taking a selfie, presumably to post on Social Media. To me, Sean Ford is the most interesting figure in contemporary pop culture.

LaBruce puts Ford in all sorts of adorable outfits throughout The Affairs of Lidia. He looks especially cute while wearing a white button up shirt with earrings and a black French Painter's hat. His lack of acting ability and the monotone delivery of his lines isn't really a problem.

I give The Affairs of Lidia 4 out of 5 stars. It's an entertaining escape if you enjoy romantic comedies and bad acting. Sit back, take in the sights, and let the soundtrack linger in your mind.

Kick Ass Satirizes Violence, Society's Obsession with the Digital, Online World

I watched the latest Hollywood comic book adaptation Kick Ass today at the Scotiabank Theatre in downtown Toronto. It's more than deserving of the praise being heaped on it by mainstream media outlets. The Globe and Mail's Rick Groen gave it three stars, The Toronto Star's Peter Howell gave it four stars, and so on...

First, the 411 on Kick Ass's plot: Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is your typical high school geek (invisible to women, comic book fan - you know the shorthand) who decides to become a superhero. In case you don't already know, Lizewski's superhero moniker and the movie's title are one and the same. Going out to fight injustice without any training or proper weapons, well, flip the words of Lizewski's superhero name to find out what happens to him.

Lucky for Kick Ass a couple real superheros complete with the tragic past, weaponry and dogmatic mindset save his behind. They would be Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his gun-toting, knife throwing daughter who has yet to reach puberty. She's Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz). Hit Girl has generated plenty of publicity for Kick Ass because her prepubescent character curses like a sailor and kills with abandon. Kick Ass was filmed in Toronto; I mention this because the only beef I have with the movie is how poor a job the producers did of camouflaging Hogtown to make it a convincing double for NYC.

Kick Ass takes off when it satirizes the genre and, in the movie's climax, throws a horrific scene at the viewer that nearly made me cry. Kick Ass throws to the curb North America's obsession with the Internet and all things electronic. Lizewski isn't elevated to superhero status until a video of him getting beaten by three thugs in a diner parking lot goes viral on YouTube. When looking for something to do as his alter ego, Lizewski checks Kick Ass's e-mail account. And in a darkly funny scene, a stuffed teddy bear spy camera records the mass slaughter of the villain's thugs.

The villain's son (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is often left to clue in his less technologically apt father (a grim Mark Strong)

Many of the characters' 'real' experiences are filtered through the online mediums of e-mail and MySpace. I found this kind of curious since MySpace's popularity has declined with the ascent of Facebook. Maybe Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't cough up enough cash to advertise his 'baby doll.'


*** SPOILER ALERT ***

A warning to anyone interested in watching Kick Ass. When the violence isn't cartoonish, it's sadistic enough to make you recoil. The scene I mentioned earlier that nearly brought me to tears is worth noting. Big Daddy is burned to death while Hit Girl attempts a rescue. This scene, and a couple others, really brings home the reality of dying, of being in agony, of being tortured. In these moments Kick Ass becomes a potent anti-violence film and the viewer is left to despair at the idea that two wrongs (ex. killing a person who killed someone close to you) can ever make a right.

It's scenes like Big Daddy's death sequence that I'm sure played through Roger Ebert's head when he described Kick Ass in his review as, "morally reprehensible." And it is. Anyone watching this movie with their brain engaged will be amused at the satire of contemporary society and saddened by all the violence, cruelty and general stupidity on display. Kick Ass doesn't just skewer the juvenile fantasy of being a 'superhero', it bulldozes it. If you're like me, you will leave the theatre impressed by the quality of what you've just watched, but also despairing for society. For all the ideas Kick Ass satirizes, it never once misses the mark.