By Hanna Rantala
LONDON (Reuters) – Writer, director and actor Emerald Fennell follows up her Oscar-winning feature debut “Promising Young Woman” with a starry satirical thriller, “Saltburn”.
Set in 2006, the movie tells the story of shy and socially awkward Oxford University freshman Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), who befriends a popular aristocratic student, Felix (Jacob Elordi). Oliver’s status and confidence are given a boost when Felix invites him to spend the summer at Saltburn, his family’s sprawling countryside estate. The long, hot summer, surrounded by wealth and the wealthy, brings out a new side of Oliver.
“Promising Young Woman”, which earned Fennell a best original screenplay Oscar, came out in 2020 and its release during the COVID pandemic helped ease some of the sophomore film pressure, Fennell said.
“It was in lockdown, I have two small children, so I was kind of in many ways quite separate from that experience, both good and bad ways.”
“I feel very grateful that ‘Promising Young Woman’ gave me the opportunity to make something like this … that I was able to actually make the film that I wanted to make, which is something quite sticky and complicated and transgressive and not so easily explained.”
Fennell, whose acting credits include “Barbie” and “The Crown”, said she spent years writing the script in her head, revisiting the characters and the locations. Finding the looks and the sounds for the movie came easy for the 38-year-old who herself studied at Oxford in the mid-2000s.
“Having the Livestrong bracelets, having the terrible kind of Nuts magazines littering everything, having the sort of dodgy clothes, it’s very kind of humanising. It makes these places feel both surreal and specific.”
The star of her debut film, Carey Mulligan, also makes an appearance in “Saltburn”, alongside Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant, who play Felix’s parents.
“I sent Carey the script just to read as a friend, and she called me immediately and said ‘I have to play Poor Dear Pamela.’ And I said, ‘God, absolutely. Thank you, please do.’ And of course, she’s exquisite. They’re all exquisite.”
“Saltburn” is out in cinemas on Nov. 17.
(Reporting by Hanna Rantala; Editing by Richard Chang)
