Barbara Baekland (Julianne Moore) is a wealthy socialite, who lives off the adventures and stories of her husband Brooks (Stephen Dillane) expeditions in search of ancient mysteries. Barbara spends her day looking after her son Tony, while spending her nights organising dinner parties with the people any good socialite needs to be seen with. The trouble with Barbara is that she has a vile temper and a low tolerance of alcohol; the two together make her an embarrassment to her husband as she repeatedly alienates people who would at one time cut their arm off to be with. Starting in the 1940's and moving forward to 1972 as the movie progresses Savage Grace follows the disturbing journey of Barbara and her son Tony as their relationships become more and more disturbing.
Savage Grace is an adaptation of the true life tale of Babara Baekland, wife of Brooks who was the grandson of Leo Baekland the creator of Bakelite plastic. The story follows this destructive relationship between Barbara, Tony, Brookes, and family friend Sam over a period of time. The result of the movies events lead up to one of the biggest American tragedies of all time, and a violent murder.
Savage Grace is a very disturbing tale, made incredibly creepy by the narration by Eddie Redmayne who plays Tony, most pieces of narration
open with Tony saying "Mummy...." in a somewhat disturbing manner. Within the first minute of the movie opening his narration is heard, and I found myself thinking "What a disturbing little freak!" This creepy narration leads the way through a movie that sickens you the more you watch it. To consider that the events of the movie are true, and not fictionalised ones makes things even worse.
Why am I so sickened I hear you cry, me the person that watches horror movies for fun? Well it all surrounds the fact that Tony is raised in such a bizarre manner. While Barbara and Brookes head off for a spot of buggery, Tony (aged 10) is left at home with a young Spanish boy and it's made very apparent that he has been experiencing a similar act. As Tony becomes a man he experiments in sex with both men and women, settling on the fact that he must be gay. But after a three in a bed session with one of the participants being his very mother, Tony decides that it's his mother he should be making love with, and she rather disturbingly takes advantage of this situation. In one scene she turns to Tony saying "I love your new boxer shorts!", "I picked them out myself" he replies as she undoes his trousers and engages in a sex act with him.
While not unfamiliar with sex scenes as anyone who as seen Short Cuts will testify, I find it rather strange to see the lovely Julianne Moore playing such a sexual role; and also saddened because the movie does not really add up to much. Moore does the best she can with the role making sure that she rules every scene even when shared with her creepy onscreen son.
Stephen Dillane too delivers proving himself to be one of the UK's up and coming leading lights with a string of solid performances from the Goal movies to period dramas like the hours. As Brookes he shows at all times a certain level of contempt for his family, almost like he was forced to stay with them despite his true wants.
What really disturbs me about the movie more than anything else is the performance by Eddie Redmayne as older Tony, whether it's good acting, bad acting or indeed something else Redmayne delivers a disturbing performance highlighted by his freakishly odd looks, which sadly bear no resemblance to earlier castings of Tony from earlier in the movie. I guess what's even worse, and I guess this really should be to the actors credit, is that Redmayne seems surprisingly at home with his performance of Tony almost as if it's totally natural to behave in such a way. Good or bad Redmayne talks with a voice so disgusting even hearing it makes you want to vomit, it's that unpleasant to hear.
The story undoubtedly is of interest but it's not delivered particularly well director Tom Kalin opting to give the movie a sort of early 80's European hollowness that I find most tiresome. In fact as British readers might remember (those around in 1984) the movie is very much like the sort of movie that Channel Four first cut its teeth with upon launch, aiming to shock and offend its audience while still managing to attract large audience numbers, by delivering a sort of semi-porn movie wrapped in a story filled with horribly inane characters who show tremendous disregard for those around, and to some extent the viewing audience. Savage Grace is a pretty vacuous offering as a whole, with small elements that are by contrast highly addictive.
I watched the trailer for Savage Grace just a few days prior to seeing the movie without realising that I would be viewing quite so soon, I at that point marked it down along with Brideshead Revisited to be one of the big movies for me to watch this summer, I'm a little sad to discover that one of the few summer highlights turned out to be such a terrible film.
Savage Grace receives a big UK premier on 11th of July, with nationwide screenings to roll out from 12th. Despite a promising trailer however this is most definitely a movie best to wait for a TV screening, and something tells me this might be sooner rather than later.
Spencer Hawken 05/08
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Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
Julianne Moore stars in Savage Grace - a dramatisation of the shocking Barbara Daly ... more
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