The idea for “Saltburn” came to Emerald Fennell about seven or eight years ago. “It was the opening line of the movie — I didn’t know that that’s what it was then — but it was a young man saying, ‘I wasn’t in love with him.’ And then that same young man licking the bottom of the bathtub,” she said. “For me, it was immediately clear what the movie was.”
A scorching blend of class satire and Gothic horror, “Saltburn” is a tale of all-consuming, destructive desire, told with the same audaciousness as Fennell’s feature debut, “Promising Young Woman,” which earned her a Best Original Screenplay Oscar and a Best Director nomination.