Just how gay is ‘Saltburn’? A spoiler-filled breakdown of Jacob Elordi & Barry Keoghan’s darkly funny thriller
* PROCEED WITH CAUTION: Major spoilers ahead for Saltburn. ***At long last, Saltburn is here.Filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman, it tells the story of an Oxford University scholarship student named Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) who finds himself drawn into the wold of his charming, much, much wealthier classmate Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), spending an eventful summer with his eccentric family at their massive estate, the eponymous Saltburn.As if that intriguing logline and those hot young stars weren’t enough, the darkly comedic drama immediately shot to the top of our must-see lists this year when we heard it described as “similar in tone” to The Talented Mr.
Ripley, the (excellent!) 1999 psychological thriller about a sexually ambiguous con man.That comparison also had us wondering if there was something more to Saltburn‘s central friendship of Oliver and Felix—like Ripley, would there be heavy homoerotic subtext between them?
Might one (or both) characters actually be gay?Well, now that we’ve had a chance to see the movie, we’ve finally got some answers.
And, honestly, our jaw’s still on the floor over just how far this movie goes, delivering “a lot of nudity and explicit scenes,” as promised, plus a handful of other moments that are sure to have people talking.So, with Saltburn in select theaters now (and opening wide on November 22), let’s break down just how gay it is, really. *And, fair warning, we’ll definitely be getting into some spoiler territory here, but will do our best to avoid the narrative’s biggest twists and turns so that even the curious can read on and still be surprised when they get to the movie theater.*In Saltburn‘s opening moments we hear Keoghan’s Oliver speaking to an unknown person about his connection with Elordi’s Felix—adamant that, while he wasn’t in love with his friend, he did love him.The monologue plays over a montage that seems to betray what Oliver’s saying, offering up many.
