I was at my mom’s house in the suburbs when I watched Barry Keoghan make love to his bestie’s grave in Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn.”“Promising Young Woman,” Fennell’s previous film, a rape-revenge thriller for the girlboss generation, was a toothless bid at provocation.
“Saltburn” seemed to promise a similar blend of all style, no substance, but the online hype had piqued my curiosity.
So, there I was, watching Keoghan as an Oxford student named Oliver become one with the soil, my mother snoozing beside me.
The moment brought back memories from adolescence of the dozens of times she’d walk into my teenage bedroom — or the same living room where I was watching “Saltburn” — to find me slack-jawed in the middle of “Basic Instinct” or “A Clockwork Orange.” Naturally, she always seemed to waltz in during the most morally compromised or sexually bewildering scenes.
Persons:
Barry Keoghan, ” “, ”, Saltburn ”, Oliver, “, —
Locations:
Oxford