There’s a certain element of mystique and wit in Saltburn that makes it different from other British comedies. In a lot of ways, you enter in a world full of over-the-top rich people who feel more like caricatures of the wealthy yet also don’t feel that far from the truth.

Or at least, what it could be like it.

For me, the best parts about this film are how we actually meet and follow these people. This is a story where we watch someone from a lower class meet someone who dazzles him and at first, I thought that this was going to be a love story like Call Me By Your Name. The first 30 minutes lead you to believe it’s going to be a romantic drama between someone poor and lonely and someone rich and popular.

But that’s not what it turns out to be at all.

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What is Saltburn?

Saltburn is a 2023 black comedy psychological thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by Emerald Fennell, starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, and Archie Madekwe. Set in Oxford and Northamptonshire, it focuses on a student at Oxford who becomes fixated with a popular, aristocratic fellow student at his university, who later invites him to spend the summer at his eccentric family's estate.

Saltburn premiered at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on 31 August 2023, then was released theatrically in the United Kingdom on 17 November 2023, and in the United States via a limited theatrical release on the same day. The film had its wide release on 22 November before its streaming release by Amazon Prime Video on 22 December, on which it became one of the most-streamed films. It received generally positive reviews from critics and several accolades, including nominations for two Golden Globe Awards and five BAFTA Film Awards.

The film focuses on excess and obsession. Fennell stated "I drew from my own experience of being a human person, who has felt that thing we all feel at that time in our life which is that absolute insane grip of obsessive love...But obviously I didn't quite go to the lengths that some of the people [in the film] do".

Discussing the film's influences, Fennell has cited A Clockwork Orange (1971), Cruel Intentions (1999), Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938), and the novel The Go-Between (1953) by L.P. Hartley and its 1971 film adaptation. She commented, "I think that I was sort of looking more at that British Country House tradition of The Go-Between and that sort of very specific British... sort of Joseph Losey world, where class and power and sex all kind of collide in one specific place." Fennell cited Losey's The Servant (1963) as an influence because of its "undeniable erotic power" that "relies entirely on the threat of violence — not just literal violence, but a complete chaotic upending of the status quo."

Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and its film adaptation (1999) have been oft-cited as an influence by critics due to the common themes of social class and the similarities between Oliver and Tom Ripley, though Fennell herself has downplayed these comparisons. Richard Brody of The New Yorker also found similarities to the novel Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

Other critics have found similarities to Pier Paolo Pasolini's film Theorem (1968) and Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), which also addressed themes of class, power, desire, and seduction. Fennell described her satire of the British class system as "Barry Lyndon meets indie sleaze."

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