SALTBURN

 If you think "Brideshead Revisited" by way of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" you will certainly be on the right road to "Saltburn" which is the title of Emerald Fennell's very dark comedy...and therein lies the problem; we have been here before though to be fair to Fennell perhaps not quite as perversely as this. It is the story of Oliver, seemingly from a broken home and fresh up at Oxford on a scholarship, who casts his eyes over the unapproachably gorgeous Felix, (Jacob Elordi, soon to be seen as Elvis in "Priscilla"), and says to himself, 'I want him' or at least, 'I want what he's got'. When he tells Felix he can't face going home for the summer Felix invites him to spend it with his obnoxiously eccentric family at Saltburn.

So far, so familiar but all isn't as it seems with Oliver, played magnificently by Barry Keoghan and cast at last as the main actor. For starters, there's another house guest at Saltburn, (Archie Madekwe as Farleigh, a petulant little snob who has it in for Oliver), but then Oliver isn't quite as backward as he lets on to be. Mooching nicely between satirical dark comedy and outright thriller material "Saltburn" looks, for about three quarters of its length, like it mightn't be going anywhere special; just another movie redeemed by Keoghan's acting but then Fennell gives us and the film that ninety degree turn we have been waiting for but didn't see coming so the final half hour is one nasty, brilliant hoot.

Not only that, but the film's actual ending is the best I've seen this year and ten out of ten to both Fennell and Keoghan for pulling it off. If only we could have had more of this earlier on. All the performances are fine, of course. Fennell, being an actress herself, clearly knows how to bring out the best in her cast. Elordi hasn't just got the looks but the acting chops to go with them. As ever Rosamund Pike as the superficial sweetness and light mother steals all her scenes and there's a terrific cameo from Carey Mulligan as another house guest but again it's Keoghan's film from first to last; he might just be the best actor of his generation.