Saltburn (2023 Emerald Fennell & scr, prod)

What could be better than seeing Emerald's new film followed by a Q&A with the film's editor Vic Boydell?

Good screening facilities at the Charlotte Street Hotel; event hosted by the BFE

The film opens boldly in 4 x3 with curiously old-fashioned Gothic titles and I am immediately thinking of a Hammer horror film (whether intentional or not we didn't find out). That opening is a beautifully timed sequence to the music ('Zadoc the Priest') but otherwise Emerald insisted that Vic's assembly work be done without sound or effects -  a major departure for our well-seasoned Vic, who's so used to working the other way. We gather that was so Emerald could have ultimate flexibility over reshaping the film, and as the edit took something like nine months, we have to come to the conclusion that she didn't really know what she was doing - but Vic got her there in the end. (Loved her saying that when the film was in shape she 'un-muted' all the music tracks she'd been working with and it all fit perfectly!)

It's a darkly comic story, with frankly a few touches that are perverse and we could do without them - well, the film could do without them - in particular when Vic said that only her and Emerald felt the emotion in the scene where Barry seems to be having sex with a grave.

But let us not jump ahead. Barry Keoghan is a new student at Oxford, finds it difficult to mix but gets the attention of charismatic Jacob Elordi - and his half-brother (or something) Archie Madekwe. Keoghan is invited to summer at Saltburn, some hideous pile, where we encounter a brilliantly funny Rosamund Pike, a playful and ferocious Richard E Grant, a psycho Alison Oliver and a stern butler, Paul Rhys (Chaplin). Then things start to get out of hand.

With a brilliant Carey Mulligan, Reece Shearsmith, Dorothy Atkinson, Shaun Dooley.

This is all beautifully shot - on film - by Linus Sandgren. (He was introduced to the project by exec producer Margot Robbie, who had worked with him on Babylon.) The location is Drayton House, Kettering, and whilst the inevitable drone shot of it was filmed, they decided quite rightly not to use it at the arrival - it's getting to be a cliche, I think - though Vic said she used '11 frames' of it at the very beginning - didn't even notice.

Keoghan has that curious quality when half of him is breaking your heart, but there's that dark half from which you think something sinister will emerge.

I'm not sure it's quite as strong as Promising Young Woman but is certainly good fun in a dark way, well acted by all. I did wonder whether it was referencing The Servant, another film about a clash of classes between two men in a large house.