At the beginning of Saltburn, Emerald Fennell’s new addition to Brideshead-genre stately worship, the outcast status of a non-posh Oxford student is instantly signalled by, to add to his low stature, his friendship with a mathematical genius with no social skills. Bespectacled, naturally.
In a film so thoroughly captivated by its upper-class inventory, inert and otherwise, it makes perfect sense that this outcast would rather be condescended to by the pretty college patrician and his vacuous circle. So it’s goodbye geek, hello Saltburn’s disapproving butler, complex place settings and non-mathematician style gems like “I can wear my suit of armour, Elsbeth”.
