If he were judged by seductiveness, sexual frenzy and star power, Burning salt would be a triumph: combine Jacob Elordi’s tongue-in-cheek beauty with Barry Keoghan’s ironic, mischievous gaze and you have my full attention. Director Emerald Fennell’s latest contribution to the much-debated exploration of rape culture. Promising Young Womanmakes his second feature film about the restless longing and envy in the relationship of two young Oxford students. It also features a strong ensemble cast that includes Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Reece Shearsmith and Carey Mulligan.
So it’s a shame that the film feels unfocused and, at worst, indulgent.
Keoghan (Banshee of Inisherin), one of the most exciting and unusual young actors of our time, plays Oliver, a young man from the north who comes to Oxford for his first year of study, having no social status, but smart enough for the occasion. Stunned and detached from the aforementioned displays of privilege and snotty snobbery, he watches in close-up as Fennell relies (too heavily) on his reactions to his surroundings.
Enter Felix, a proud, posh boy, so well embodied by Aussie Elordi, after whom the magnificent mansion is named in the film, who inexplicably invites his new friend to stay with him, much to the chagrin of many of his more privileged friends.
Things escalate as Oliver’s crush on Felix – and his feelings of confusion and alienation growing – culminates in a psychosexual explosion. This is Patricia Highsmith territory, although Fennell’s writing is nowhere near as sensitive or nearly as subtle in its feelings about class.
Fennell has style. From the groovy, genre-bending selection of tunes to the vibrant, colorful sets that expose Oliver’s hungry eyes to dazzling, hedonistic directions. Burning salt it’s both devastating and seductive to watch.
But Burning salt faces many problems Promising Young Woman tat: The plot is uneven – too little happens over long periods of time, and then too much happens. And what’s worse, he tends to treat his characters more like moving, funny figures than real people, a problem that strong actors can only solve to a limited extent.
Fennell, whose own past is unmistakably chic (her 18th birthday was featured in Tatler) seems to be trying to take an outsider’s view of the evil dynamics at play in these exceptional, beautiful worlds, offering a code for the nobility eating the rich. But the central, repressed homosexual passion that Oliver seems to harbor for Felix—and which ultimately exposes him as a sociopath—suggests a rather unconvincing observation about working-class envy.
It’s normal for less privileged people to be outraged by the jaded ignorance of the super-rich; It’s not a case of Fennell positioning himself as a “have your cake and eat it too” role here.
Source: I News
I am Mario Pickle and I work in the news website industry as an author. I have been with 24 News Reporters for over 3 years, where I specialize in entertainment-related topics such as books, films, and other media. My background is in film studies and journalism, giving me the knowledge to write engaging pieces that appeal to a wide variety of readers.