Emerald Fennell is, it must be said, no stranger to controversial scenes. Her debut film, “Promising Young Woman,” was extraordinarily divisive when it released in 2020 — and even though it went on to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, the movie’s finale is hotly contested, to say the least. “Saltburn” has stirred up even more discourse, but Fennell is standing her ground, especially when it comes to that bathtub scene.
“To me, the bathtub is just an incredibly erotic scene,” she said while speaking to Time Magazine. “It is all the things that something stirring should be, which is funny and intimate and shocking and revolting and unbelievably sexy.”
Fennell then elaborated on her sentiment, saying that Oliver’s obsession with Felix has to be strange and disturbing — because her intent was to show a very specific type of obsession. “What I was trying to make with this film was something that felt actually true about the nature of desire,” she continued. “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.”
So there you have it: Barry Keoghan slurping up a mixture of dairy and water is there to show just how far desire can push a person. “Saltburn,” with all of its unsettling moments, is streaming on Amazon Prime now.
