A lovely supporting turn from Rosamund Pike – and a raucous cameo from Carey Mulligan – are the main reasons to like the opening movie of the London film festival: the new film from Emerald Fennell, whose fierce 2020 debut Promising Young Woman won her a screenplay Oscar.
Saltburn is an English mystery drama of the high-cheekboned upper classes, watchable but sometimes weirdly overheated and grandiose, with some secondhand posh-effect stylings, a movie derived from Evelyn Waugh and Patricia Highsmith, with a bit of Pasolini; it’s supposed to be (mostly) set in 2006, but behaves as if it’s 1932.
