Saltburn on Amazon Prime: Emerald Fennell's Provocative Midsummer Night's Dream

Friend of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, director and actress Emerald Fennell made a name for herself at the helm of season 2 of Killing Eve and under the wig of Camilla Parker Bowles in seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown. The 38-year-old Briton has a fierce sense of humor in common with the creator of Fleabag. Without forgetting a certain penchant for provocation. Enough to ensure him the Oscar for best screenplay for his road trip Promising Young Woman in 2021. Bis repeated in his second feature film Saltburn, to be enjoyed this Friday on Amazon Prime.

Arriving at Oxford via a scholarship at the dawn of the 2000s, Oliver (Barry Keoghan, the formidable lost kid from the Banshees of Inisherin) is the laughing stock of his privileged comrades. Thanks to a bicycle repair, the very handsome Felix (Jacob Elordi, new Hollywood heartthrob), object of his desires, takes him under his wing and invites him to spend the summer in the family mansion in Saltburn. His parents (Rosamund Pike haughty and disconnected from reality) and his sister look down on his dirty ways. Without warning, Oliver will know how to coax them. The languorous and sensual summer will give way to nightmarish bacchanalia.

“ I grew up watching the films of James Ivory and Bertolucci: gothic love stories in a palatial estate. I wanted to pay tribute to them, to show what happens when the restraint in these wealthy circles is shattered. What happens when you can't touch what you want? When you fall in love as you enter adulthood, everything becomes a question of life and death,” professes Emerald Fennell, who also pays tribute to British class society, of which she is herself a pure product.

His point is based on a Barry Keoghan with the face of an angel, who endures humiliation and does not hesitate to degrade himself. “Oliver drops the mask from the first scene: he is a liar, a deceiver. He claims to have never loved Felix. Yet what he describes is the most erotic and twisted love story there is. This is the magic of the Gothic story. No matter how many times Oliver doesn't act like a simple observer or spies on Felix at his window, we come back to that amnesia, that first impression of innocence , gloats Emerald Fennell.

Bathed in Caravaggesque chiaroscuro, Saltburn has something to fascinate and repulse in equal measure. Those who hang on will be rewarded with a virtuoso final scene, setting a ballet number to the sound of Murder on the Dancefloor by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. The 2001 hit resonates like a Pyrrhic victory. “ I couldn’t have asked for a better triumphant and profane epilogue! », warns the director.