Before the end of 2023, we were blessed with the raunchiest movie TikTok can handle before it gets scared: Saltburn. In the run-up to its release, there was a lot of anticipation for just how disturbing this thriller would turn out to be. And then, when it was finally here, its audience seemed somewhat split into the camps of edge lords who had seen much worse (“Have you even seen A Serbian Film?”) or people who seemed entirely shocked by what the film presented them with. In reality, Saltburn’s disturbing elements, when taken at face value, are still quite prudish, revealing fears that are more conservative than the hype will have you believe.  

At the core of the film’s shock value is the main character Oliver’s (Barry Keoghan) seemingly insatiable sexuality. Though we first encounter him as a meek scholarship student trying his best to fit in with the Oxford elite, he quickly switches things up. In his efforts to infiltrate the upper crust, he flirts with and manipulates the unwitting inhabitants of the eponymous Saltburn. His greatest motivation seems at first to just be his love for Jacob Elordi’s character, Felix Catton. Oliver is intensely infatuated with him and as an audience, we can’t help to fall for him as well. The camera lingers lasciviously on beads of sweat gathering at the nape of Felix’s neck, his naked torso in the grass outside his family castle, specs of dust flying through the air of his sweltering Oxford room as he lies sprawled out on the floor. There’s not only the much talked-about-love in these scenes but a palpable, physical desire.  

The darkness behind the desire is revealed upon their arrival in Saltburn, when Oliver, conveniently placed in a room that is connected to Felix’s, catches his friend pleasuring himself in the bathtub. Again, we are treated to some beautifully voyeuristic shots of Felix’s body with Oliver watching over him. After the fact, when Felix has retired to his room, Oliver kneels down in the bathtub and, in one of the most viscerally gross-out scenes of the film, gulps down the water that Felix has just ejaculated into. While many have justified their shock at the scene with the simple fact of how unhygienic it is to put your mouth anywhere near a drain, there’s something about the sensuality of Oliver’s actions that stands out and makes viewers uncomfortable. It deviates so strongly from normal expressions of desire, instead showing us how obsessive Oliver is.  

As is later revealed, his ambition is expansion, he wants to consume Felix, the rest of his family, their home, and their prestige. His actions so far have all been in service of his invasion of Saltburn. Yet the way he consumes the bath water is still performed in a way to submit himself to Felix. It is a consumption of Felix’s body but only of parts that he’s discarded, only an approximation of what Oliver really wants. Much of the anticipation for the film came from fans supposing that there was a possibility of a romantic relationship between Oliver and Felix, though the trailer frames the film less like a romance and more like a class-satire horror in the vein of Ready or Not (2019). Watching Oliver’s obsession with Felix play out on screen betrays the filmmaker’s unwillingness to commit to an idea. I would venture to suggest that if this film was actually a brave and daring masterpiece, it would have dared to make its main characters fuck.  

Subversiveness ends up being more of a flag-draped seductively over this film than something truly reflected by its message. However, it really seems to have hit a nerve. The same audience who’s been starting culture wars over the inclusion of sex scenes in films is now foaming at the mouth over Barry Keoghan’s admittedly captivating performance. Perhaps the answer to this supposed discrepancy lies in Saltburn’s use of sex purely as a means of furthering its plot. Oliver’s advances usually occur after he’s been humiliated, so he utilizes sex to reaffirm his power. Whether it is pleasurable or not, is left entirely unaddressed. What the film seems to suggest is that his enjoyment arises not from the act itself from the ability to retaliate against those who stand in his way. In this way, it complies with one of the main complaints aimed at sex scenes in film: that they do not add anything to the plot.  

Following this argumentation, sex is equated with other activities like eating or using the bathroom that could just be left to the imagination. It relegates these deeply human activities to the realm of the unexpressed, denying them their importance. What is not taken into account here is the dimensions that can be explored through what might be considered vulgar or base. After all, aren’t food documentaries immensely popular for the simple fact that there’s enjoyment to be gained by watching food being prepared and consumed? I’m arguing here specifically for sex on screen because our culture has alienated us from our own pleasure. It seems particularly important to me to portray sex in all of its facets beyond its relevance to narrative. Especially when it is only used to communicate power struggles and imbalances in so many instances. In reality, sex exists both within and beyond power.  

(Since I started writing this essay, YouTuber Contrapoints has released a new video essay on the book and film series Twilight that touches on a lot of similar questions that I was interested in and ended up influencing my thinking a lot. She makes an interesting case for the presence of power within desire and sexuality, so I would recommend watching it.)  

Instead of invoking typical fears of sexuality that is all-consuming and purely shock-based, this film could have made its sexual elements really stand out by having them include sincerity and dedication to portraying the queerness that it would later use as a marketing tool. As it stands, the film just dazzles with its shock value and its gothic flair, but in my opinion, not through any kind of innovative or interesting approach to sexuality. I just hope that we’re in for another Showgirls (1995) soon and luckily with films like Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers or the Kristen Stewart-helmed Love Lies Bleeding coming up this year, we might be in for a redemption of sex in cinema.