Saltburn movie review: who cares about bathwater when you can have period blood
more aesthetic porn, and you know, just garden variety porn, for the Tumblr era adults
I will review every single movie I watch in 2024, even if reviews are short and sweet. Do recommend any films you think I should watch and review for me. I have yet to watch Wonka but watched Pretty Things yesterday; the review is coming soon.
Like the movie, this review is superficial and cloyingly horny. You’ve been warned. Hopefully, after some practice, my reviews will be skilful and self-respecting. For now, you get this:
I think someone told movie makers millennials are not watching porn out of principle and they are on a mission to recreate the soft core artsy tumblr porn of their teenage years.
People familiar with my blog told me I need to watch it; it looks like the sort of thing I’d write about. They were right. I asked if it would make me feel horny and lonely, and they said no because the sex and relationships in it are not something to aspire to. They were wrong.
The main characters in Saltburn are a posh English heartthrob and a mishapenned middle-class boy who cosplays as the working-class son of alcoholics because he believes it will make him more interesting to the posho above. He knows his audience.
I couldn’t stop grinning with satisfaction from the first scene. The story takes place in 2006, in Oxford college campuses and the estate of the posh hottie’s family. The cinematographer does a lot of heavy lifting. The scenes unfold like a Donna Tarr novel but with the lightness of an American Apparel ad circa 2009—Horny and dark. The combination of art and trash is tailored to the adult hunched over Tumblr for many adolescent years. Everyone is bisexual, even if we are not told as much.
Those who say it is superficial and has nothing new to say about the relationship between the rich and the poor have a good point and one that I ignored because films, for me, don’t always need to be that deep. I remember explaining to my Greek girlfriends why I fancy the English. They had all these very reasonable arguments about why dating men too different from me is a bad long-term strategy. Yes, and. Like English men, what does it matter if the plot is unconvincing when it is so charming?
I don’t care for the actor playing the posh boy, Jacob blah blah, whatever his name is. He is dreamy and cool. I understand people find men who look like him to be very attractive. I think he is good-looking, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to introduce myself to him in a mixer.
I prefer the main character, the middle-class striver. He is chaotic and desperate but shape-shifting. The daddy of all incels, he tops from the bottom. At the beginning of the film, he looks wrinkly and ugly. By the end, where he is dancing naked, his willy helicoptering in between his legs, he looks like a reborn adonis. I have found this to be the case with all interesting men. Initially, they look plain, but they transform if you expose yourself enough to their tricks.
Also, I wouldn't say I liked the final plot twist, but it almost doesn’t matter. It’s like complaining about the stale post-coital cigarette when you’ve already climaxed three times. Even though there is a scene where (SPOILER ALERT) the protagonist is fucking his dead friend’s grave, I did not find the sex scenes to be overwrought.
Especially the period sex one. It is such a compelling scene because it shows what every anorexic girl from a privileged but loveless family needs. For every part of her to be accepted, worshipped even, blood clots and all. In that scene, Oliver, our leading man, is seducing the posh hearthrobe’s sister outside their manor in the middle of the night and goes for her private parts, and she protests prudently that ‘it’s not the right time of the month’. Without skipping a beat, he ignores her and says, “Is that something you think I am worried about?’. Then he dives in like the hard-working, self-made man he claims to be.
The script was gimmicky, sure, but it gave us all these wonderfully meme-able lines. If only I were still a 16-year-old with a Tumblr account, I would post the following on rotation:
I was a lesbian for a while, you know, but it was all a bit too wet for me in the end. Men are so lovely and dry.
[after learning of a friend's suicide] She'd do anything for attention.
I don't think you're a spider; you're a moth. Quiet, harmless, drawn to shiny things, banging up against a window, and begging to get in.
Oliver, I have a complete and utter horror of ugliness. Ever since I was a child. I don't know why.
Fuck, chuck or marry: Richard III, Henry VII or Henry VIII? You know, I think I'd fuck Richard III. He's so insecure, so you know he'd put in the work, right?
Or you could just fuck me.
What did you all think?
That's it! That's why I liked it despite being a bit too close to my experience with the poshies from Durham Universities when I was an Italian peasant (accent and all). The Tumblr aesthetics and the not-really-porn but good enough! But mostly the aesthetics. You're cool and write cool things. I shall continue digging.