CANNIBALISTIC PARANOID NARCISSISM

AMAZON PRIME — BARRY KEOGHAN — SALTBURN — 2023

So much is being said about this film and rumored about some scenes that are supposed to be sexy and they are but in a plain cinematographic way. Just do not show what everyone wants to see, and just give a glimpse of it within a full view of the backside dancing in front of your eyes. So, plain sexy erotic appeal. Nothing is more desirable than what you do not see, you cannot watch, you can only have a skimpy glimpse at. But don’t try to get a closer vision. The actor is Irish so, he is probably not cut.

But of course, the most important side of this film is not the few sexy scenes between mostly the three male young characters who from time to time may condescend to, or plainly conquer, grasp, take possession of a girl for a minute, rarely more, because they are quick to come to terms with the situation to move on to the next vessel of their bliss. So, what is the most important side of this film? It is what some call the gothic story. But it is in no way gothic in the simple meaning of the term. It is simply a cannibalistic self-possessed male who has decided to take possession of the assets of a rich, very rich aristocrat, a Sir mind you but with no noble title. Too bad. The cannibal is Oliver Quick. He is from an upper middleclass family, but he pretends his family is derelict and deprived of everything, that his father has just fallen on the sidewalk in some Mersey city in a state of full drunkenness, and thus killed himself. He pretends his mother is a drunk that he has endured for years, making her vomit her drunkenness every night with his own fingers in her throat before she goes to sleep so that she will wake up the following morning. He let people say he has a scholarship (in Oxford mind you) and thus is one of the scums of society that all the portentous hypocrites of the aristocracy and top bourgeois classes in this microcosm of hell that Oxford University is, all of them must both reject, look down upon, and at the same time give them a few crumbs from the top banquet table under which they have to be kept?

Our Oliver Quick decides that he is going to conquer, meaning take possession of this Catton family and family home, Sir James Catton and his wife. So, he seduces the son first, emotionally for sure but not sexually…