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Screenwriter: Howard A Rodman
Starring: Julianne Moore, Eddie Redmayne, Hugh Dancy
Running Time: 97mins
Certificate: 15
Disappointingly, Julianne Moore has struggled to capitalise on her double whammy of Oscar nominations for The Hours and Far From Heaven in 2003. That’s despite dabbling in a wide variety of genres from romantic comedy to science fiction. She hit an unprecedented low in 2007 with the mind-bogglingly bad time-hopping thriller Next, so it’s not difficult to figure out why she might’ve been attracted to Savage Grace, adapted from Natalie Robins’s book.
This true-life drama sees Moore return to somewhat familiar territory, playing Barbara Day Baekeland, lonely housewife to the heir of the Bakelite plastics fortune Brooks Baekeland (a sharp-edged Stephen Dillane). In this instance, rather than suffer quietly - watery blue eyes beseeching The Academy - she leans on their son Tony (Eddie Redmayne) for moral support. However, the intensity of their bond, building over the course of 25 years, would culminate in one of the most scandalous murders ever to hit the headlines.
It’s a case of déjà vu for the director as well. Tom Kalin’s first film outing was in 1992 with Swoon, one of many screen takes on the true story of Leopold and Loeb, the murderous gay lovers who also inspired Hitchcock classic Rope. Unfortunately, Kalin doesn’t have the same feel for suspense or scathing character dissection. Instead he plumps for softly-lit melodrama, as hollow and heartless as the Baekelands themselves.
The story unfolds episodically, beginning in 1946 when Tony is still in the cot. As the adult looking back, Redmayne narrates, bemoaning the state of his parents’ marriage and, implicitly, blaming them for what was to come. Barbara is cast as the vulgar, nouveau riche wife who makes a show of fitting in with Brooks’s society friends, and always fails in spectacular style. While she slips from grace in her husband’s eyes, Tony’s obsession with his mother grows, and it’s further fuelled by her unbridled affection towards him.
Passion may bubble just beneath the surface, but Kalin has a hard time showing us that. He seems to take a leaf out of the Baekeland’s book of social etiquette, keeping his approach cool and aloof, and never really getting to the bottom of Barbara’s pathological behaviour. Later on, Tony’s resentment of her finally becomes apparent, but only due to an argument over a misplaced dog collar; the dead mutt being a rather lazy metaphor for his lost innocence. Redmayne, with his pale skin and sullen pout, is effortlessly creepy, but like his schoolboy psycho turn in 2006 thriller Like Minds, he brings little else to the role.
The final confrontation between mother and son plays out like a sudden explosion. Kalin makes no room for anticipation and doesn’t offer any solid clues about Tony’s capacity for violence. In a letter to his father he says only that he has “bloody thoughts”, but the space between his thoughts and his actions just isn’t bridged. In place of that there’s a lot of lounging around and general carousing in the society hotspots of Mallorca and Paris. Kalin is focused too much on the decadence without explaining the dysfunction it breeds.
Moore is fearless in the role of a mother who, essentially, seduces her son over three decades. It suits her rare combination of steel backbone and porcelain frailty, but her best moments - whether squaring up to her husband’s mistress or fluttering her eyelashes at her doe-eyed boy - all amount to nothing. Ultimately, the characters feel as if they’ve just been popped from a Bakelite mould. And just as at the start, you’re left with questions, except the need to know why is totally vanquished. Forget Oedipus Rex, this is Oedipus wrecked.
