Thank you for this fine review. I too was repulsed by the film. It revels in the psycho's sadistic destruction of these people without adequate literary compensations.
I do think there's a point, however. This is an eat-the-rich (literally, sort of) and fuck-their-graves fantasy. I imagine a director's cut where Oliver fucks the dead mom. Seemed like it was about to go there; in any case, that's the obvious sentiment as he flamboyantly murders her by ripping out the tube with cinematic flourish before crawling up her body. Nice.
Now, granted, these people aren't real. Well, Felix is. (So is, I'd say, Farleigh, actually.) The rest are ludicrous cartoons. That goes for Oliver too, who represents not a plausible person but an adolescent idea -- that the world is run, circa 2002, by PBS-ish aristocrats with butlers and footmen who richly deserve a good plundering for the sin of dressing for dinner.
For all the movie's purported naughtiness, the erotic sensibility is glib and depressing. Sex = fucking = destroying. Note the paucity of actual sex. Note the mockery of parents losing their children. Note, indeed, the absence of, as you point out, humanity. We're fooled in the early going, and even after the first big twist, into believing that Oliver is, as Farleigh puts it, a "real boy." Silly us. He's a moth, as Venetia says, but that's shallow and tedious, especially where we get the sense that we're supposed to be on the moth's side.
Fair observation! I'll admit that Felix and Farleigh seem to be written with real characters in mind; Felix in particular feels like a lived-in charmer, and Elordi sells the character well. I'm not as convinced that Oliver is deliberately constructed as an "adolescent idea," however. I like the idea you're putting forward, but I'm not convinced that Fennell is self-aware enough to write Oliver as a literalized historical concept.
so many words to be so wrong lol also so wrong about promising young woman it’s a sad story of a traumatized woman trying to heal herself in all the wrong ways and the ending shows how wrong and dangerous her method was it’s not a story to be celebrated or replicated and it doesn’t try to be
everything you criticized was intentional and purposely incendiary. you also didn’t see any of the references that give the story depth. you know stories don’t have to be about good people right?
Thank you for this fine review. I too was repulsed by the film. It revels in the psycho's sadistic destruction of these people without adequate literary compensations.
I do think there's a point, however. This is an eat-the-rich (literally, sort of) and fuck-their-graves fantasy. I imagine a director's cut where Oliver fucks the dead mom. Seemed like it was about to go there; in any case, that's the obvious sentiment as he flamboyantly murders her by ripping out the tube with cinematic flourish before crawling up her body. Nice.
Now, granted, these people aren't real. Well, Felix is. (So is, I'd say, Farleigh, actually.) The rest are ludicrous cartoons. That goes for Oliver too, who represents not a plausible person but an adolescent idea -- that the world is run, circa 2002, by PBS-ish aristocrats with butlers and footmen who richly deserve a good plundering for the sin of dressing for dinner.
For all the movie's purported naughtiness, the erotic sensibility is glib and depressing. Sex = fucking = destroying. Note the paucity of actual sex. Note the mockery of parents losing their children. Note, indeed, the absence of, as you point out, humanity. We're fooled in the early going, and even after the first big twist, into believing that Oliver is, as Farleigh puts it, a "real boy." Silly us. He's a moth, as Venetia says, but that's shallow and tedious, especially where we get the sense that we're supposed to be on the moth's side.
Fair observation! I'll admit that Felix and Farleigh seem to be written with real characters in mind; Felix in particular feels like a lived-in charmer, and Elordi sells the character well. I'm not as convinced that Oliver is deliberately constructed as an "adolescent idea," however. I like the idea you're putting forward, but I'm not convinced that Fennell is self-aware enough to write Oliver as a literalized historical concept.
so many words to be so wrong lol also so wrong about promising young woman it’s a sad story of a traumatized woman trying to heal herself in all the wrong ways and the ending shows how wrong and dangerous her method was it’s not a story to be celebrated or replicated and it doesn’t try to be
everything you criticized was intentional and purposely incendiary. you also didn’t see any of the references that give the story depth. you know stories don’t have to be about good people right?
you’re really stupid and clearly just didn’t get the movie