SALTBURN

I  missed this in the cinema, so caught up this week (thanks, BBC).

I took an instant dislike; it seemed a very low-rent revamp of Brideshead Revisited. Working-class Oliver, on a scholarship to Oxford, is drawn into upper-crust Felix’s circle and then is invited to the family seat – a stately-home sized mansion, of course, with a maze and a creepy butler.

Felix has a bulimic sister, an ADHD semi-adopted brother, scatter-brained bohemian parents (Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant). There are parties every night, lots of booze, a few drugs, sex for some – Felix, nightly. But Oliver has developed a crush on Felix which is welcomed but not reciprocated. And then things begin to unravel ….

I found the characters totally unsympathetic and the endless Brideshead references tiresome until the “unravelling”.

Felix (Jacon Elordi) is very much a modernised Sebastian from Brideshead, posh, spoilt and imposssibly handsome. Barry Keoghan’s Oliver is short, plain and nerdish, perfectly out of his element, and I began to find him tiresome, as do some of the family. But the “unravelling” last chapter confirms what a fine young actor he is. I was disappointed that the creepy butler (Paul Rhys) didn’t contribute to the unravelling.

Writer/director Emerald Fennell serves up a clever slice of period parody. Some fairly explicit sex (and masturbation) have probably induced younger viewers to play with the FF. Patience is required to sit through the whole two hours. Mine came close to running out. I found myself remembering how imagnificent the 1980 13-hour TV Brideshead was – and how unavoidably slow, especially the whole episode devoted to the death of Laurence Olivier. The 2008 movie was a lot shorter and did Evelyn Waugh almost as much justice as the TV version; it also had Emma Thompson at her most edgy best, which is enough for me to plan a third viewing. Once is going to be enough for Saltburn.

Saltburn can be seen on BBC iPlayer