Oh, the deliciously lurid world of an Emerald Fennell film. She has a penchant for exploring life’s underbelly—the sordid bits, the discomfiting bits, the awkward bits. All the bits that make you squirm. But they are also beautifully filmed, ridiculously stylish and she always, always chooses fabulous music which is used to maximum effect. Fennell adores exploring our seedier emotions to their extreme, and while being provocative doesn’t always hit the mark, occasionally wobbling into the daft, it’s impossible not to admire her exuberant vision. She also seems to have a dense array of fabulous actors at her disposal too, even for the smidgiest of cameos, giving the distinct impression that she’s a lot of fun to work with—I’m certain she is! So, if you’re a fan of chic, occasionally trashy, sometimes twisted, often cheeky films, then these are definitely worth a butcher’s.
Promising Young Woman Cassie Thomas dropped out of med school when her best friend Nina was raped, while drunk, at a party. When no-one would listen and the guilty went free, Nina was so emotionally fraught she committed suicide and Cassie has been tormented by it ever since. Now just turned 30, Cassie lives at home, spending her days working in a coffee shop and her nights feigning drunkenness in clubs until a “nice guy” offers to take her home—you know the kind of guy—solicitous, considerate even, right up to the point they’re taking off her knickers. Cassie’s overarching mission is to make everyone who played a part in Nina’s death answer for their actions. Some might call this revenge, others may call it justice, but Cassie’s true desire is for them to confront the consequences of their choices—to experience, if only for a moment, the same vulnerability and fear they so casually inflicted on someone else. Her crusade is dark but cheeky, undertaken with a bright smile, but one concealing simmering rage. When unexpected twists threaten to derail her carefully laid plans, Cassie fights on and still manages to get the last laugh. This is a brilliantly scathing and nuanced look at the complicity of rape culture and the conceit of the male ego, complemented by a sugar coated backdrop of bubbly music and pastel colors. And Carey Mulligan, as Cassie, is brilliant.
Saltburn It’s 2006 and Oliver Quick’s scholarship status as a student at Oxford places him at a distinct disadvantage among the university’s privileged elite. This changes one morning when he comes to the rescue of the effortlessly charismatic Felix Catton, who’s stranded at the mercy of a flat tire on his bike and considerably late for class. Oliver magnanimously offers up his own bike, an act which throws wide open a door into an intoxicating world of wealth, beauty and excess. And Oliver is more than happy to tumble right on through. When summer arrives, Felix invites Oliver to spend the holidays at his family’s sprawling estate, Saltburn. Here, Oliver is swept into a rarified world removed from reality, where opulence is taken for granted and lavish parties are thrown on a whim. Oliver may be an outsider, but he wastes no time ingratiating himself with the eccentric Catton family. As the dog days of that sultry summer unfold, events at Saltburn turn messy and then tragic. Much of the film’s splendour lies in its brilliant cast. Rosamund Pike plays Lady Elspeth with her renowned tart glamour and icy verve while Richard E. Grant is wonderfully understated as Sir James, sweet and shallow and affably detached. Jacob Elordi, in turn, is perfection as Felix, gliding through life with his good looks and cool ease. But it’s Barry Keoghan who owns the film. His performance as Oliver is extraordinary—quietly unnerving, endlessly fascinating and layered with a depth and ambiguity that keeps you questioning his every move until the very end. In Saltburn Fennell lures us into a glittering world of decadence, fills it with casual cruelty and uses it as a backdrop for an erotic, psychological thriller of power, envy, and obsession. It is a veritable millefeuille of seductive style, wicked satire and deeply, deeply uncomfortable, sexually explicit scenes.
Wuthering Heights The eternally classic and tragic tale of all-consuming love—if it can be called love—and revenge. Cathy and Heathcliff form a deep bond as they grow up as children, race and class drive a wedge between them, and then their tempestuous souls find lust with each other once again. While the book is convoluted, non-linear and narrated, Fennell has stripped it of excess, taking its core essence and distilling it into this movie—which, quite frankly, I thoroughly enjoyed. It has been a handful of decades since I read the book and so I cannot attest to its finer plot points, but then Fennell is more interested in mood and vibes than she is in actual plot. Wuthering Heights is not romantic, it’s gothic— the wildness of the Yorkshire moors, the dense swirling fog, the abject poverty and abuse which takes a sharp swing into wealth—all of it serves as a backdrop to a selfish love that twists itself into an ugly obsession. Fennell’s interpretation is melodramatic and over-the-top, yes, but this is what she does best: pushing themes to their outer limit and revelling in what she finds. Wuthering Heights is visually decadent with beautiful clothes, wild interiors and stunning cinematography and as the self-professed lover of a highly stylised film, I was happy to embrace this movie on its merits alone, without nit-picking or book comparisons. Having said that this is my least favourite of the three—it lacks the biting satire of Promising Young Woman and the wicked depravity of Saltburn. Still thoroughly enjoyable though.