[Interview] Emerald Fennell on ‘SALTBURN,’ exploring the concept of not belonging

Preston Barta // Features Editor

Saltburn, written and directed by Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman), continues the Academy Award-winning talent’s grand ability to apply pressure. Not only can the characters feel that challenge with each other, but so can the audience with Fennell’s visuals and situational intensities. (I overheard a couple in my theater hilariously questioning what they were watching.) Certain images won’t escape the mind anytime soon, and it’s all good fun for what they accomplish and inform about its characters.

This stroke of genius is an extreme thriller about obsession, resentment and revenge. It’s like imagining an F. Scott Fitzgerald or John Knowles literary work spiked with the unsettling wildness of Talented Mr. Ripley and A Clockwork Orange. 

Saltburn follows Oliver Quick (an excellent Barry Keoghan), a young Oxford student who finds himself drawn into the charming and aristocratic world of Felix Catton (an equally as great Jacob Elordi). After palling around, Felix invites Oliver to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling estate, for one unforgettable summer. 

Co-starring the award-worthy Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant, Saltburn is an intimate home of familial duels. In other words, it’s a perfect “Fennellian” playground, complete with an array of mischievous backstabbers, dark wit and a dash of eroticism. (Ready yourself for an ending that’ll have you dancing out of the theater for its sheer daring and twistedness.) It’s inventive, bold and fearless, never losing its nerve along the way. 

Q&A

While at the Austin Film Festival’s premiere of the film, Fresh Fiction had the opportunity to speak with Fennell via Zoom. In the video chat below, we discuss the art of balancing serenity with the left-of-center, the concept of not belonging, and the tone’s jazz-like quality.

Enjoy the conversation, and catch the film in theaters today!