“Saltburn” hits Amazon Prime this Christmas and amazes (© Amazon Content Services LLC)
Those who enjoyed Beautiful Revenge, the 2021 film Carey Muligan and winner of the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, I'm sure they were eagerly awaiting the premiere Salt burnhis director's new film, Emerald Fennell what is considered the great cinematic bet of Christmas Prime Video and how One of the titles that has sparked the most debate this awards season.
Led by Barry Keoghan (The Ghosts of the Island) and Jacob Elordi (My first kiss), Salt burn puts us in the shoes of an Oxford student who, swept away by the charm of one of his rich and charming classmates, immerses himself in the eccentric world of the British aristocracy and is confronted with its excesses and temptations.
The band stands as a sharp criticism of the class system, with the Beautiful Revenge director demonstrating the twisted and unsettling style with which she conquered us in her previous works. Although it is difficult not to resist the charm of this perverted game, the feeling it leaves behind is stranger than you would expect. At least in my case I finished the viewing not knowing whether I had seen a masterpiece or a pretentious horror.
For the beginning, The captivating audio-visual performance is a joy to watch, which completely draws you into the characters' experience. The fast pace, the detailed shots, its luxurious universe, the 2000s pop aesthetic or the good musical accompaniment make it difficult not to surrender to this intoxicating world, to empathize with the story and to experience every twist as if we were even the ones. protagonists.
In this sense, it reproduces the virtues of “Beautiful Revenge”, which, like no other film, managed to convey the horror of sexual violence, make us fall in love through its audiovisual approach and then hit us with the harsh reality. The involvement in the story was maximum, so the director did not hesitate to improve this scheme to analyze class privilege and remove us in the most effective way. However, I think so She wanted to be too ambitious.
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There are Scenes that try to be so provocative and uncomfortable that they go completely out of control, moments that want to create an impact and that are used with such excess that they end up feeling superfluous and out of place. It's a problem that's compounded when the entire middle section of the film is full of sequences of this magnitude, with details that play so exaggeratedly on the sensual and obscene that they take you completely out of the action and drive you crazy thinking, that Salt burn The film doesn't have anything else to offer, it's a meaningless film.
Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi shine in “Saltburn.” (Chiabella James; © 2022 Amazon Content Services LLC)
There is for example an erotic moment with Jacob Elordi in the bathtub that shocked me in every way. In this scene, Barry Keoghan's character takes an act of sexual fascination to such a repulsive level that while it's understandable that he wants to cause us extreme discomfort in order to upset us, in the end he goes so far beyond that that he ends up distorting the intentions of the Main parts of the film. Basically because throughout the footage you're thinking about the impact of these moments and not so much the message they convey Salt burn would like to let you reach me.
Fortunately, It resolves itself in the final stretch and provides a conclusion on a level that I won't reveal. However, it is also true that we are dealing with such a trite topic and with such obvious considerations that one cannot help but think that this film is completely superfluous and unnecessary.
The director of “Saltburn” proposes a critique of social classes. (© 2022 Amazon Content Services LLC)
Given the very different reactions he has elicited from critics, and the fact that he remains so unnoticed in the Oscar race (currently he only has nominations for artistic and acting achievements for Keoghan or Rosamund Pike at awards such as the Golden Globes or Satellite Awards), I'd say I'm not the only one who ended the viewing feeling this way It makes me think that the public when they discover it Salt burn When you watch it on Prime Video from December 22nd, you'll also get a feeling of bewilderment.
On the whole I can't say that it is a bad film, because as I said at the beginning of the text, it seems to me that it has such a visual representation that at times I even had the feeling to see a cinematic masterpiece. It makes me sad that it leans so much towards excess and ends up feeling like an empty film, because that's what I think With a more controlled tone, we could be facing one of the big titles of 2023.
This article was written exclusively for Yahoo en Español by Cine 54.
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