Saltburn: Desire, disgust, and dirty bathwater
By Claire Wilsher
Saltburn. A film that has divided the public like no other. It tackles class, hierarchy and desire in a heady gothic whirlwind. Forget the raging global crises and the cost of living crisis, all people want to talk about is Barry Keoghan getting down and dirty with a bathtub. Love it or hate it, there seems to be no middle ground. Rave reviews followed by scathing criticism; no-one seems to be saying, yeah it was alright. I watched it with the sole intention of picking a side in this battle, and ended up bang smack in the middle. Sat on the fence about a film so polarising it’s got thousands of reviews on Google and 90% are either 1 or 5 star. Turns out, you can’t include a scene of someone dry humping a grave and get a ‘meh’ from the audience. Watching Saltburn feels part sexy-gothic-death-fest, part giggle inducing parody. You watch it never really sure who to like, but leave pretty sure you hate them all.
The thing that took me off that lonely fence of mine, was an interview with Emerald Fennel where she discusses the more controversial scenes (ahem bath tub, cough aforementioned grave humping, and erm period sex). She describes how rather than intending to shock or disgust the audience, she sees them as ‘incredibly sexy’; an exposure not of depravity, but of the reality that sex and desire can be (and potentially should be) gross.
Seen through this lens, these moments become the film at its best: an exploration of pleasure and disgust. Here we dip in the pool of excess and inequality, and push on a bruise that begs you to look away while whispering that you shouldn’t. The reality is, there will always be something disgusting about desire from the outside in, something slightly gross about pleasure.
The scenes that make you flinch, feel the most honest. The bathtub epitomises desire at its most grotesque and most real. I’m not saying we’d all lick someone’s dirty (cough cough) bathwater, but am I saying that most of us have done at least some gross things in the moment? I think I am, yes (sorry mum). We’re offered a window into a room that’s normally shut. The room you close even to your closest friends. The place where you keep the thoughts not even fit to share after a couple of wines with the gals, for fear of saying something that might be met with a stunned silence.
Then, there’s the period scene. The moment Venetia says ‘it’s the wrong time of the month’ brought the film from a comedy of excess to a very inescapable reality. It’s the moment we’ve all had. Granted, it’s not normally Barry Keoghan offering to go down on you in front of your family mansion! But, in the moment, the guy from work going home to have sex with you in your slightly damp room feels pretty similar.
We’ve all done the verbal equivalent of the see-through nighty - we’ve all talked the big talk. We’ve made what we think is a sexy flirt: fancy a snog? Come back to mine? I have some nice crumpets at home! We’ve all done it, only then to remember that we’re on the blob (great phrase, I know). You get all the way to the sexy moment, only to panic and realise the ultimate fear: they might be grossed out. It’s 2024, it shouldn’t still be a worry, but a lifetime of shaming lets you know it’s still a possibility.
Then you see it, even Venetia - sexy, cool, sex-crazed (but aren’t we all really) Venetia - feels it too. So what happens next is magic: Oliver doesn’t care. That boy dives on in - albeit with a slightly weird vampire comment which I’ll admit dried me up like the sahara desert. But give the boy a break, because none of us would want to listen back to what we’ve said in the heat of the moment. He dives in and makes period sex sexy.
Emerald takes gothic imagery and makes it female-led. The woman’s blood isn’t a symbol of her demise or a symbol of her lost innocence. It’s a symbol of Venetia being a bloody (pardon the pun) empowered legend. Is it a bit gross to be covered in someone else’s crimson wave? Yes it is. But is it also a bit sexy and empowering? This film leaves that up to you.
So yes, Emerald Fennel’s film teeters right on the edge of being funny and/or deeply uncomfortable to watch. And no, I wouldn’t want to watch it with my mum. Saltburn makes you look at desire and sex in a way that is both interesting and tricky to look at. It’s not Promising Young Woman, and for that I will always be a bit sad. But this film has something different. It holds you right on the edge of pleasure and disgust and makes you wonder if you like it.
Claire is a primary school teacher in Bristol and when she’s not getting bullied by 7 year olds she likes long walks on the sand and dismantling capitalism.
Read more of her writing on her personal blog, on Instagram @Claire-writes-bits or in some of her more political musings for Harpy.
