The year is 2006. A plain, bespectacled Oliver enters Oxford, where, lacking both charm and money, he is forced to mingle only with beggars like himself. One day Oliver happens to help someone, then befriends his fellow student Felix — a popular, handsome scion of an aristocratic family. Moved by tales of his new friend's difficult childhood, Felix invites him to spend the summer holidays at the ancestral estate Saltburn — a real palace, where the estate's inhabitants, relatives, and hangers-on are bored.