bromance of the year

Jacob Elordi & Barry Keoghan’s homoerotic ‘Saltburn’ bromance is giving the gays everything we want

Barry Keoghan, with messy brown hair, smiles wearing a long black sweater with a mesh strip and metallic buttons affixed over his shoulders. Behind him, Jacob Elordi holds his arm around him while laughing. Elordi wears a chain around his neck and an unbuttoned pastel yellow dress shirt showing off a bit of chest hair underneath a black suit jacket with silver lines alongside it. The two stand in front of a crowd in a dark room at GQ's Men of the Year party.

We’re feeling the (salt) burn.

In case you missed it, Saltburn hit theaters over the weekend, and it’s no secret that the buzz around director Emerald Fennell’s new thriller is palpable.

And while critics are raving about the film, which currently has a 73% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, we’re a bit more fixated on the dynamic between its leading men: Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan.

To be fair, it’s their job to market this movie to the thirsty gays general moviegoing population.

But these boys must know what they’re doing to us.

Just take a look at the, err, friendly way Elordi welcomed to Keoghan (who was adorably filming the crowd) to the stage at a recent screening.

Watch.

Furthermore, Elordi, who stands 6’5″, seemed to be very concerned about his 5’8″ co-star’s comfort when he assisted in setting Keoghan’s coffee down for him with the help of his long, long legs.

Later during the cast’s audience Q&A, he even initiated a poke fight. God bless Australia.

And then, of course, there was this will-they, won’t-they moment when the duo almost smooched at the Saltburn red carpet premiere.

Still, the hottest most damning moment came in a recent interview with Variety in which the two actors described a very explicit scene featuring Keoghan’s character and, um, the bodily fluids of Elordi’s.

“I was like, ‘Thank god, it’s mine,'” Elordi said. “I was very proud to have Barry Keoghan guzzling it like that.” (BRB, booking our tickets to the next showing right now. No questions asked.)

As for Keoghan’s response, he joked to the outlet, “[Elordi] doesn’t text me back or ring me back. It’s so weird. He’s pretending to like me. It’s weird man.”

Furthermore, both men are certainly two of the biggest rising stars in Hollywood right now.

Elordi recently stole the show as Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla. On the other hand, Keoghan won a BAFTA and scored an Academy Award nod for last year’s The Banshees of Inisherin.

Whatever the relationship may be, it hasn’t stopped Gay Twitter X from jumping on a new meme, inspired by their bromance’s sexual tension.

And also, erm, the dramatic height difference.

That being said, Saltburn isn’t an outright LGBTQ+ film.

The movie follows the story of Oxford University student Oliver Quick (Keoghan) who’s invited to spend the summer at the home of his wealthier classmate Felix Catton (Elordi).

Surrounded by a world of luxury, partying, and power, Oliver finds himself infatuated with Felix’s lifestyle… and simultaneously lost in it.

And while you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for a raucous gay lovemaking scene, Saltburn‘s director made it clear that its homoerotic undertones are certainly intentional.

“This is a film entirely about desire, and that desire takes every conceivable manifestation, and it’s so important,” Fennell told The Pink News. “Of course, [queerness is] part of the very fabric of the film… This is a world where everyone wants everyone.”

Regardless, there’s no denying that Elordi and Keoghan know how to market the hell out of a film.

Watch the trailer for Saltburn, which is now playing in select theaters and opens everywhere on November 22, below.

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