Emerald Fennell Explains Why ‘Saltburn’ Is a Feminist Film

Saltburn is many things: stylish, swoonworthy, biting, subversive, and several other descriptors that could never do the film justice individually. And apparently, we can officially add “feminist” to Saltburn’s résumé thanks to some new insight from Emerald Fennell herself.

When asked in a recent interview with The Wrap about her shift to Saltburn, a film that chiefly focuses on male characters, after first stealing the show a few years earlier with her women-centric directorial debut Promising Young Woman, Fennell remarked how the position she occupies as a female director will fundamentally make her body of work a feminist one, regardless of what her individual films deal with.

“Being a female filmmaker is a feminist action. And it’s become more and more apparent as I go on how much of a feminist act it is, whether you like it or not. It’s been a very interesting thing with this movie because of course Promising Young Woman was so personal and so political because of the nature of what it was discussing… Then, of course, [Saltburn] came out, and I think a lot of people were looking at it in a political way. And that was a little bit of a surprise to me. And then I realized that being a female filmmaker is a political act.”

She went on to lament the fact that being a female filmmaker is considered a political act while also embracing the feminist lens that, if her first two features are any indication of what’s next, is one that she probably won’t be ditching any time soon, even if she could.

“That’s the thing that’s political — whether you write about women, whether you write about men, whether you make something biographical, whether you use your imagination, who you work with, how you work with them, all of that is still, regrettably, an unusual thing to be. Therefore, I think that this film is extraordinarily feminist. It exists. Everything I do is feminist because it’s what I live my life by.”

Of course, women—and just about everyone else who isn’t white, straight, cisgender, etc.—never asked to have our existence politicized, and the fact that we have been is only slightly more frustrating than the fact that the word “political” has reached a point where it hardly has any meaning most of the time. Indeed, no one gets labeled “political” for having alternative opinions on how we should be spending tax dollars to solve a problem or help a group of people, and there’s no prizes for guessing why the label actually gets applied.

In any case, Fennell looks to be making the best of it and then some as she continues this remarkable filmmaking trajectory, and we all eagerly await whatever twisted masterclass could possibly follow Saltburn.

Saltburn is available to stream on Prime Video.

(featured image: Amazon MGM Studios)