Fated to Pretend

Saltburn can't decide if it wants to eat the rich or be one of them.

EMERALD FENNELL IS GREAT AT montages and terrible at endings. That is very much the case with her Oscar-winning 2020 debut, Promising Young Woman, in which Carey Mulligan plays a woman who has left behind her own life after the suicide of a friend to act as a date-rape vigilante. It’s even more true of Fennell’s second feature, Saltburn, a febrile thriller about an Oxford undergrad who befriends an aristocratic hunk of a classmate and gets invited to spend the summer at the guy’s country pile, an estate whose name gives the film its title. It’s too early in Fennell’s career to draw sweeping conclusions about her sensibility, though it feels fair to say that one of her more irritating habits as a writer is a fondness for button-pushing last acts that undermine all the character building that has come before. She has plenty of strengths, among them the ebullient tempo of her work, an ability to home in on themes that feel urgent even though they’re not explored in depth, and, well, vibes. I don’t mean that to sound disdainful—Promising Young Woman is darkly compelling until it turns frustratingly glib. Saltburn is a much sillier and more empty film, yet its vibes are strong enough to sustain it right up until the climax—when Fennell can’t help but once again blow up everything she’s built in favor of a finale that makes you feel a little dumb for being invested. Fennell may be an exasperating filmmaker, yet she’s incapable of being boring.