Saltburn's Sex Scenes Are Raunchy And Raw For An Important Reason

Contains spoilers for "Saltburn"

Writer-director Emerald Fennell's sophomore feature "Saltburn" is, to say the very least, brazenly and shockingly sexual. This becomes immediately apparent shortly after Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) arrives at the country estate of the wealthy, titled Catton family — the titular Saltburn — and watches his best friend and object of his affection, Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), pleasure himself in their shared bathtub. After Felix exits the tub, Oliver hovers over the drain — and consumes what remains.

This is the tip of the raunchy iceberg when it comes to "Saltburn," a film about how Oliver manages to topple and overtake this rich, powerful, and entitled family from the inside out. So why did Fennell go so far with these scenes, from that moment with the bathtub to one where Oliver makes love to Felix's grave? As Vulture reported, Fennell was asked what the film was about — and she was quite clear. "It's about desire," she said. "Real, sticky, awkward, mortifying, intense, dangerous desire, which requires a certain amount of exposure from everyone. I'm only interested in things that make me shudder."

"Saltburn" certainly is sticky, awkward, mortifying, and intense, among other adjectives. The reason that it's so extreme, though, is because Oliver's desire — and his manipulation of the very concept of desire — is how he's able to overcome the Cattons and take their spoils for himself.

Speaking to Time Magazine, Emerald Fennell told the outlet that she had French writer-director Catherine Breillat and her film "Romance" in mind while writing "Saltburn" — particularly when it comes to the concept of desire. "In 'Romance' she says that beauty thrives on degradation and that sexual tension isn't between two people, it's between desire and revulsion," Fennell said. "That tension is what the whole film is about. It's about our relationship with the things we want and how sado-masochistic that can be."

Oliver is first drawn to Felix at Oxford based on the boy's physical appearance and charm alone, only then realizing that Felix's wealth and privilege affords him an enormous amount of power. Even so, he can't fully deny that he was obsessed with Felix. Throughout the film, we see Oliver talking about the narrative after the fact, and it's only at the end of the movie that we learn he's relaying this to Felix's mother Elsbeth (Rosamund Pike), who lies helplessly in a hospital bed and is hooked up to a feeding tube. "I wasn't in love with him, although everyone thought I was ... I loved him, I loved him, I loved him. But was I in love with him?" Oliver asks his captive rhetorically before climbing atop her, admitting that really, he hated Felix. He hated all of them, he tells Elsbeth, before removing said breathing tube so that he can finally own Saltburn himself (Elspeth signed it over to Oliver after the rest of the family members died).

Oliver loved Felix and he hated him; that much is true. By seducing and eliminating Felix's family around him — and, in fact, Felix himself — Oliver gets what he wants and, in a way, becomes Felix, as the heir to the Catton estate. Oliver isn't rich, wealthy, or powerful, but he can (and does) use sex against the Cattons as a sort of weapon, wielding pleasure like a knife. Interestingly, though, he manipulates Felix's cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe) and Felix's sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) through sex, but his sexual moments concerning Felix — the bathtub and the grave — are done in secret.

Emerald Fennell did this on purpose. In that same Time interview, she says she thinks the scene with the bathtub explains the truest root of Oliver's desire. "To me, the bathtub is just an incredibly erotic scene," she said. "It is all the things that something stirring should be, which is funny and intimate and shocking and revolting and unbelievably sexy. What I was trying to make with this film was something that felt actually true about the nature of desire. For desire to really take you in its grip like it does in this movie, it has to be to a certain degree transgressive. It has to be something you wouldn't necessarily want people to see."

Oliver desires Felix, power, wealth, and all that the Cattons have and are. He also hates them. That's precisely why "Saltburn" is so sexually raw — the line between love and hate can be razor-thin, and Oliver walks it until all the Cattons are gone.