When Emerald Fennell let loose on the world her directorial debut, 2020’s Promising Young Woman, the reaction to it quickly turned into an all-out brawl. A woman fakes intoxication in order to trap and confront predatory men, and is drawn into a dead-end act of revenge against the man who sexually assaulted her best friend. Was this a feminist triumph? Or a betrayal of those same ideals? I thought it was neither, really – more a very sad story in neon-pink attire, about a grief-torn avenging angel who’s actually engaged in a protracted form of self-harm.
It wasn’t a film driven by political thought but by pure emotion. And I think that, too, is the best approach to take with Fennell’s follow-up, Saltburn. As a class satire, it reaches no conclusions. But it’s filled to the brim with darkly funny, bile-slicked revulsion. For its director, who hails from the same upper classes she targets, it’s an act of self-excavation.
