“Only rich people can afford to be this filthy”

On Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn (2023)

Saltburn is filled with the evocation of aromas, from its title which evokes a rugged seaside existence to the spritz of cologne Felix applies after his bath. Tellingly, it is Oliver (Barry Keoghan), gazing at the immaculate and shirtless Felix (Jacob Elordi) who utters the truth: “What’s that smell?” in response to the rotting garbage that fills Felix’s room. Oliver begins to tidy and his observation, “only rich people can afford to be this filthy” comes back to haunt me later, when Oliver begins to reveal himself through his palate.

The opening sequence is a symphony of Elordi’s flesh, hair, and sweat, an elegy to a particular kind of gleaming scion whose very existence is supposed to somehow make up for the vast inequalities created by the class system and wealth derived from extractive economies. The fact that the poster at the top of this entry even exists is a testament to Felix’s bewitching affect. Felix may have an eyebrow piercing and ‘carpe diem’ tattooed on his forearm, but it is those careless Ralph Lauren shirts that give him away. Though he dabbles in minor aesthetic rebellions, the cloud of privilege clings to him no matter how hard he tries to look like the kind of guy who runs expensive yoga retreats in Thailand.

A mood

Oliver, on the other hand, wears a chain, and that’s a more common flourish these days but in 2006 that was something only working class lads tended towards. Or pro footballers. Or rockstars. Oliver’s swagger comes from the legend he builds for himself as a scholarship student with a rough upbringing, out of his element in the rarefied world of Oxford. At first, he is excluded, but later he is prized for what are seen to be his authentic experiences.

2006, when this story takes place, is about the same time I interviewed for a post at St Anne’s College in Oxford. I was mystified as to how I made it to that shortlist, since I do not have the Oxbridge pedigree. I had to ask someone who had gone to Oxford for tips and her main advice was “they will like to feel you will be someone jolly to dine with.” I now realise what honest advice this was. To have an accent that doesn’t read as posh immediately marks you out. If you are too clever, or too passionate, if you do not wear your intellect lightly, this too marks you as an outsider even though you are more likely to be good value at dinner. Posturing, dressing well, covering it all up with élan and a knowledge of etiquette are often more important for surviving this kind of environment.

 There are always young men like Felix. I have met them, been in thrall to them, even enjoyed them on occasion. I went to a posh uni for my masters (it was McGill, ok?) and one thing I wasn’t prepared for was the American equivalent of Felix. Charming, gorgeous, smart, and slumming it with their parents’ money, there were a lot of them in Montréal. I suspect I missed the worst of it because I was a postgraduate but when I found the gilded J sitting on the front steps of our apartment building, scribbling in his notebook in the rain I found I simply had to invite him for a drink. He stood up and all six feet or so of him unfolded, slender, in his uncle’s hand me down suits, dirty blonde hair shaken out of his eyes. He would reveal himself to be a monster of selfishness, but he had his moments. As it turned out, his best pal A would be more fun, and a better friend. It would be A who took me for sushi when I got fired from my internet start-up job, and it was A with whom I ate oysters in Paris. But it was J I let break my heart over and over again until I was glad when he left the city for good. The lure of a beautiful, charming, posh boy is a great weakness.

The details that give you away

Oxford is not like other places in the UK, and when Felix tells Oliver that his public school education consisted of “Latin, water polo, and child abuse” he is, by all accounts, not far off. It is Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), also something of a hanger-on, who tells Ollie “you’re almost passing,” after noticing his sleeves are too long on his tuxedo jacket. This kind of detail exists to give away the uninitiated, not knowing to ‘shoot the cuffs’ as my father showed my high school boyfriend how to do, when he borrowed my father’s Spencer-cut tuxedo jacket to escort me to my high school graduation ball. The edge of your white cuff should be visible just beyond the sleeve hem. If you are quite a dandy, you might also be sporting a distinctive cuff link. Just as he does not know how to make his rented evening wear seem like his own, Oliver does not know it is gauche as fuck to be too awestruck and so when he arrives at Saltburn he appears sincerely gobsmacked by this beautiful place despite its “fucking hideous Reubens” and the fact that he and Felix must share one of the nicest bathrooms I’ve ever seen (how very Call Me By Your Name).

This bathroom is too alluring and probably smells like fresh pomegranate

The Loves of the Centaurs, 1635

Speaking of Reubens, I did think about this absurdly horny painting, which I saw in Lisbon in 2022. It is held in a collection that has certainly been used to launder oil money. The museum has wonderful gardens, open to the public, and the collection ranges from antiquity to the contemporary. It houses a first edition of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, and the largest selection of Lalique jewellery I’ve ever seen. I feel conflicted about this place, that its collection is so beautifully presented and preserved, that the gardens are so delightful. It is the same complicated feeling I have about Saltburn—its indolence, its velvety textures, the taste of champagne licked off someone else, the glint of sequins, the glimpse of an ill-advised tattoo through white linen. I know I would like to be at that birthday party, but then I am a ridiculous, decadent creature.

She seems fun, tbh

The fact that Farleigh, Venetia (Alison Oliver), and Felix seem to read nothing except Harry Potter books speaks volumes—a kind of nursery taste that extends in many directions, an abhorrence of a DISPLAY of intellectual depth, a love of plain, soothing flavours, palates that have never known the caress of sriracha, dining tables where the word ‘fucking’ is never used as an emphatic adjective, and where the zing of genre knowledge is not permitted.

Oliver soon realises that he brings a certain enlivening flavour to the proceedings. The moment he accepts the nickname Ollie he realises he can be THAT GUY, he’s Mellors with a fancy degree. He holds Farleigh’s gaze, knowing he’d like the chance to fuck him; he immediately clocks Venetia’s enticements, her translucent nightgown, her eager desire to fuck someone who doesn’t quite belong in her world. When Ollie tells Elspeth (Rosamund Pike, at her brittle, careless best) “you’re so fucking beautiful” his gaze climbs her like a whip, and she looks faintly alarmed. As a model in the heyday of Britpop, Elspeth ought to know a predator when she sees one, but she warily ignores this remark, hoping the frisson will disappear with the call to dinner.  

Oliver is as taken as any of us would be by the glories of Saltburn, its anachronistic customs, manicured gardens, pools and ponds to swim in, its history, its magnificent bath tub. This is a world so delicious he cannot help but be hungry; a hunger for Felix’s cum-infused bathwater, and Venetia’s menstrual blood, a desire so all-consuming he will fuck the wet earth of a fresh grave. But this is no abject obsession, because Ollie is not just a vampire, but a cannibal who plays a long game, a mercenary search and destroy mission that annihilates everything in his way until he is back in that delicious world.