Featured Movies
Partners
Savage GraceSavage Grace features one of Julianne Moore's finest and most fearless performances. It's just a pity the film itself doesn't quite equal her quality, and rarely rises above the level of a twisted melodrama.
Based on the true story of the Baekeland family, who made their fortune in the 1920s with the creation of Bakelite, the film begins in 1946. Heir to the family fortune Brooks Baekeland (Dillane) has fathered a son with his new, middle-class wife Barbara (Moore), but the relationship between the rich couple is already strained and fraught with problems. This, and Barbara's desperate need for love, means that the bond between her and her new son Tony becomes oddly close, and continues developing as he grows into a handsome, if troubled, young man (Redmayne).
As they journey around Europe during the 1960s, with Barbara always determined to travel in the right social circles, Brooks becomes more distant, and the family starts to fracture. Tony has a brief fling with a young Spanish girl who then dumps him for his father, and as the marriage between his parents finally collapses, his relationship with his mother slowly enters darker, more unnatural territory.
Directed by Tom Kalin, still best known for his provocative 1992 drama Swoon, Savage Grace is most effective as a truly unsettling study of a mother-son relationship gone terribly wrong, but despite fine work from the actors, it never quite coheres as a film. The characters themselves remain superficial, distancing the audience from the story, and the resulting tragedy never quite touches the emotions, instead feeling more like a foregone conclusion. There are scenes that are genuinely uncomfortable to watch, but their shocking nature feels clinical, giving rise to what is ultimately a rather cold film.
Moore herself is outstanding, charting Barbara's descent from simple class-related insecurities to serial infidelities, while never losing the character's inherent sense of poise and style. Indeed, her presence, combined with the sumptuous visual style, brings back memories of her work in Far From Heaven, as Savage Grace uses similar melodramatic devices. Large sections of the film are played like a typically old fashioned tale of the decadent rich, meaning that when the more transgressive sequences arrive, they have a much greater impact.
Unfortunately, without a close connection to the characters, all we're left with is the film's shimmering photography, which makes the most of the many European locations, and the clammy sense of claustrophobia as the relationship between Tony and Barbara spirals out of control. Even the passage of time is only truly shown by the occasional change in fashions (Moore doesn't seem to age over a 26 year period), while Eddie Redmayne is a little too blank as Tom, giving the audience nothing to latch onto as the story heads towards its bleak conclusion.
It may be finely crafted, but Savage Grace misses out on the darkness and humanity that could have made it truly effective, and instead feels like a collection of interesting but ultimately inconsequential scenes.
|
