Fran Magazine: Issue #90
Forget it, Jake. It's Saltburn.
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Housekeeping
This is the last regular issue of Fran Magazine of the year, and this Sunday will be the last Sunday Dispatch of the year. After this week, I’ll see you on New Year’s Eve. And if I finish Daniel Deronda, you’ll hear about it.
Maestro moment
God, where to even begin? It’s been a WEEK of Maestro moments.
Maestro did a two-day food truck pop-up with South Philly pizza legend (? I’m from the Midwest) Danny DiGiampietro of Angelos Pizzaria where they didn’t make pizza, but cheesesteaks. You can take the boy out of Philly, etc. You could only get cheesesteaks ($10) and all the money went to charity (and presumably the non-Maestro employees). Maestro worked the grill the whole time to avoid public interface — smart. I would be doing the same.
And then of course, Maestro and Emma Stone of Aloha fame reunited for one of this year’s Actors on Actors. This is a great watch, depending on your stomach for these two relatively annoying people. It’s sort of the Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong of this year — two insane girls telling each other “no exactly,” etc. What’s most appealing about this is that Emma Stone bullies Bradley Cooper for the duration of the interview, proof that more people should be bullying him. He’s a silly guy. He’ll make it work!
Last night, Maestro “premiered” in Los Angeles. That movie came out three weeks ago. There was a strike! We know! Get over it!
Bro I saw you geotagged Saltburn last weekend
In lieu of catching up on any of the actually good movies I still would like to watch before the end of the year, I dedicated my night to Saltburn. My friend Lucy was in town, and we wanted to watch something that felt decadent and at least a little stupid. This is the part of Fran Magazine where I admit to having liked — and maybe even still liking — Promising Young Woman, which I realize puts me at odds with a number of my peers. I can go long on that movie, but maybe another time, and behind a paywall so that the people who might get mad at me will at least have to give me $6. Suffice it to say that I find Promising Young Woman not really an ardent call to girlboss action so much as I do a wretched and miserable piece of filmmaking about the types of feminists who buy male tears mugs and listen to true crime. Listening to either Emerald Fennell or Carey Mulligan discuss this movie has made is clear neither of them think this about the film. Whatever. It’s my interpretation to have, and that’s fine. I also think the casting of Bo Burnham was apt.
Saltburn also appealed in part due to my fascination with a microgenre of my own invention, “I’m always mad at my one friend.” Here are some other, actually good examples of this genre: The Social Network1, The Talented Mr. Ripley2, Showgirls, Point Break. The truly beautiful example of “I’m always mad at my one friend” movie from this past year was Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up. Go watch that right now and come back to me!
Fennell’s Saltburn is mostly her doing a riff on Tom Ripley from The Talented Mr. Ripley, a middle-class scammer/psychopath/murderer introduced in literature by Patricia Highsmith before appearing in Réné Clément’s Purple Noon3 and then Anthony Mingella’s adaptation that shares its name with the book. There are other Ripley book adaptations but for now we are concerned with the first entry, in which Ripley convinces a wealthy shipping magnate that he will go to Italy to retrieve the magnate’s son, Dickie Greenleaf, who is lollygagging around with his novelist girlfriend Marge but is expected to take over his father’s business. Ripley does not know Greenleaf ahead of their fated Italian interaction, but he quickly becomes obsessed with the man and all of the decadence and wealth around him. Ripley goes to Italy and ruins the lives of many, many people. It’s awesome.
In Saltburn, Barry Keoghan plays Oliver Quick (lol) who is the Tom Ripley stand-in, with Jacob Elordi, bf du jour, playing Felix Catton. You want this movie to be better? Just call him Felix Saltburn. They go to Oxford together, where they strike up a friendship despite the fact that Oliver is a weird loser and Felix is so hot and played by Jacob Elordi. You know, from Euphoria! Oliver’s family situation is, as he describes it, not so good. Felix invites him to Saltburn for the summer holiday, where he lives with his father (Richard E. Grant), mother (Rosamund Pike), sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), and cousin Farleigh (lol — Archie Madekwe). Oliver ruins all their lives! This should be thrilling, because these are rich ghouls and Oliver is a twisted little psycho, but mostly it’s dull. The rich people are mostly too nice. Oliver is a little too crazy. The momentum is never there. The movie keeps inventing twists for itself. There’s a hedge maze? He drinks cum? Who cares!
Saltburn, to my understanding, is quite popular on TikTok and maybe Tumblr, if it still exists, and maybe even Instagram reels, where I am afraid to go, because it is the type of movie that was made for fan edit and gifset. It is all high-saturated images and glances and blinks. You would barely know the movie is written. It helps, too, that Elordi and Keoghan — both fine actors, I’d say, though Keoghan is pretty bad in this — are going by The Social Network playbook where they spend their interviews flirting. Saltburn also appeals to the subsection of the population who is interested in “dark academia” — aka what if grad school went wrong. Let me tell you, honey, dark academic doesn’t look anything like that at Rutgers-Newark!!!
The core issue with Saltburn, beside that it is mostly just boring, is that a number of members of this cast think they are sort of, well, “being the Joker” in a way that hurts the film because this movie doesn’t need one the Joker let alone five of them. You’ve maybe heard that Rosamund Pike is good here? Didn’t she get a Golden Globe nomination? No (though yes to the Globe nomination). Maybe you’ve heard that Alison Oliver — who gave last year’s worst performance in any TV show ever made in Conversations with Friends — redeems herself? No. Maybe you’ve heard that Archie Madekwe gives a good enough performance to convince you as a viewer that maybe the whole movie should have been about his character, Farleigh?4 No!!! Not to mention the weird butler and Oliver’s weird STEM friend at Oxford — why are these people all pitched up to their highest Joker setting. This movie does not need this. One of the best parts of something like The Talented Mr. Ripley is how mostly understated it all is. Those characters spend most of the movie chilling, letting tensions bubble and simmer. In dreaded Saltburn, the characters otherwise say something kinda fucked up, and then they stare at Oliver with their eyes all wide and knowing to suggest, “Isn’t it so crazy? What I just said aloud that was written for me?” The two best performances in the film are the aforementioned Mr. Jacob Elordi who is Elvis in Priscilla and Richard E. Grant, too old and esteemed and talented, frankly, to be doing this movie “ironically.” He is playing is straight — and thank god for it!
That said, Saltburn was not a complete wash. There are two great bit parts that caught my attention. The first is the ever-funny Lolly Adefope who some people know from Shrill and other people know from one of the all-time great seasons of Taskmaster. She delivers the only line I laughed out loud at. That’s not nothing! The latter is Dorothy Atkinson who is a — ring the bell — a Mike Leigh bit player, known best for her supporting work in Topsy Turvy and Mr. Turner. Atkinson shows up at the 11th hour as a person with some insight into Oliver’s past. She’s in the movie for all of six minutes and kills it. Kind of the Marin Ireland in Eileen of Saltburn (not really — but you get it). Good work, Dorothy!! Please share any insight you have on Mr. Leigh’s next film, and please make sure he never watches this one.
Last two things: I will be watching what Emerald Fennell does next. I thought her wordless waving in Barbie was funny, and we all have to have a filmmaker whose output we don’t necessarily like to root for but do anyway, and she’s mine. You guys can keep Woody Allen and the guy who made Brawl in Cell 99 or whatever. The other is that she shouted out I Think You Should Leave in Off The Fence. What do you think her favorite sketch is? Sound off below.
More on this in a moment.
More on this in a moment too.
I always have to look up if it’s Purple Noon or Purple Moon :(
I think this might actually be the worst performance in the film! Sad. Madekwe’s accent is good, and I feel like he’s probably charming in Gran Turismo. Whatever he’s been directed to do here is just not working.
will the Fran Mag sweatshirts perhaps drop in 2024?
i think emerald likes "santa brought it early"... can't explain why...something about the manic energy feels like what she's going for but can't ever quite achieve... santa - he brought it early!