Saltburn

Sunbathing at Saltburn. Photo courtesy of Prime via IMDB.com

She's a mischief maker, that Emerald Fennell.

Last year, the versatile English actress, writer and director won a bunch of awards, including an Oscar for writing “Promising Young Woman.” It was a wry tale of gender vengeance featuring Carey Mulligan as a med school dropout who finds brilliant ways of settling scores with the perpetrators of a gang rape of her classmate. Actually, her target was more like men in general.

Now Fennell's back with “Saltburn,” another diabolical tale of settling scores that dances precariously on the line between black comedy and horror show. Now available on Prime Video, it's brilliantly written, dangerously sensual, sumptuous to watch, and thoroughly unsettling – that's the point.

Barry Keoghan stars as Oliver Quick, a bright young Oxford student often at the mercy or the butt of the joke for wealthy, legacy classmates like snobby Farleigh Start (Archie Madekwe). Seemingly comfortable enough in the role of nerdy outcast in his scholarship wardrobe, his fortunes change when he is befriended by classmate Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Felix is everything that Oliver isn't – obscenely wealthy, charismatic beyond belief, catnip for any woman in sight, utterly assured in every moment.

The friendship begins with an act of giving on Oliver's part, but is that enough to explain Felix's endless generosity in return? They're hardly equals, but the rich son of nobility keeps acting as though they are. 

Are friends just playthings for Felix? Is their improbable relationship love, or lust, or what?

We suspect we're going to find out … but we're not sure we want to. 

The enigmas mount after Felix invites Oliver to his family's opulent estate – Saltburn – for the summer. 

In endless corridors lined with original art and folio editions of Shakespeare, Oliver is greeted by the family, a decadent bunch for sure. When he first meets Felix's father, Sir James Catton (Richard E. Grant), he's giggling like an eighth grader watching a video of “Superbad.”

Sir James is in the library with his loquacious wife Elspeth (a terrific Rosamund Pike), who calls everyone “darling,” but can barely wait for them to leave the room to start talking about them. Her first such target, played by Carey Mulligan, is identified in the credits as Poor Dear Pamela. The coterie includes daughter Venetia (Alison Oliver), pouty and blond, Oliver's first seduction just waiting to happen.

Farleigh Start, Oliver's nemesis from Oxford, is here, too. He's a cousin, his status something between family member and freeloader. Symbiotic relationships – people using, or misusing, or toying with or otherwise exploiting each other – are as close as the Cattons can come to family ties, as they while away the summer in alcohol, swimming, tennis, more alcohol, and one debauchery after another.

Beginning with Keoghan, last seen stealing the show and earning an supporting-actor Oscar nomination for “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the performances are wicked and delicious. 

Underpinning them all is the peculiar bond between Oliver and Felix. Oliver talks to the camera periodically – a device director Fennell uses to frame the narrative – seeking the distinction between loving and being in love. But we suspect that neither he nor we are getting to the sordid depths of the matter.

Fennell as a smart, stylish filmmaker, whether it comes to probing psyches or orchestrating amazing tracking shots, going from room to room or building to building, sometimes with scores of extras in the background. She is a master of ambiguity, not tying up loose ends but rather letting questions of character linger.

The fact that she has a devilish sense of humor is another plus … or drawback if you don't have the stomach for “Saltburn's” eat-the-rich school of comedy.