Emerald Fennell on Saltburn
The director thrilled a packed cinema with an entertaining post-screening conversation at THE FACE Film Society’s preview of her riotous new film.
A soggy evening in East London, but an audience of FACE readers, friends and family at a full-to-the-brim Curzon Hoxton cinema defied storm Ciarán to immerse themselves in… storm Saltburn.
Emerald Fennell’s film is a perfectly pitched tempest of craven social climbing, naked ambition, class envy, sex games, mind games and the kind of games that only generations of toffs inhabiting musty ancestral piles know how to play. It’s packed, too, with a cast to die for, including Jacob Elordi (Euphoria), Barry Keoghan (Top Boy), Ewan Mitchell (House of the Dragon) and Alison Oliver (Conversations with Friends).
As lucky FACE Film Society attendees thrilled to the salaciously sexy psychodrama, there wasn’t a dry seat in the house (it was raining, remember).
A lot to enjoy, then, and a lot to excitedly unpack. So for this exclusive, free, early preview of her second feature, we were privileged to have the Oscar-winning writer-director in attendance for a post-screening Q&A.
Highlighting Keoghan’s bravura performance, Fennell said it was her leading man’s willingness to go there – and then go there some more – that drew her to cast him first.
But, she clarified, “I think, honestly, that’s something I’d look for in anyone that I work with… Always to be pushing towards something that’s complicated, difficult, embarrassing, exposing. That’s the kind of film I’m interested in making, really. And when I first met Barry, it just became clear that that is exactly the sort of performer he is.”
Head to Instagram and TikTok for soundbites from Fennell onstage, and for an early taste of a wickedly brilliant film that’s in cinemas on Friday 17th November.
With huge thanks to all who attended, and to everyone who made this latest outing for THE FACE Film Society such a success: Emerald Fennell, Premier, Warner Bros. Pictures and Curzon Hoxton
