Oedipus wrecked

Savage Grace is a strangely listless
movie about a lurid true story

MOTHER’S LITTLE HUMPER:
Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne

by MATTHEW HAYS

Anticipation was running high for Savage Grace, the film based on the lurid true tale of one of the most sensational aristocratic murders in U.S. history, that of Barbara Baekeland by her son Tony. It’s a nasty tale, involving incest, a filthy rich heir, his hard-drinking, messed-up wife and their gay son. And the fact that it was helmed by Tom Kalin made everyone take notice.

Kalin made Swoon in 1992, a film that drew widespread praise for its lush reconfiguring of the notorious Leopold-Loeb murders. Astonishingly, Kalin hadn’t made a film since.

The writer-director also made a casting coup by getting Julianne Moore to take the lead role, who’s so capable that she is utterly believable as the mentally unstable mother. There’s much to commend here: when her character makes an ill-advised foray into painting, she shows some of her work in Paris, only to be ridiculed for even thinking she could approach a modicum of talent. As Moore paints the character, her pain can be tasted, her bitter need to be accepted and loved obvious and tender. Cinematographer Juan Miguel Azpiroz deserves high praise for capturing all of the sexy locations—the family jet sets from New York to London to Paris (among other places)—lounging in decadence wherever they go.

But by the midway point, something feels wrong with the film as a whole. Savage Grace, despite a perfect title, subject matter that sounds so lurid in simple description that it seemingly couldn’t possibly strike out, the cast, the look and the locations, still feels somehow listless.

Kalin works to distance us from the chilling outcome of the Oedipal relationship Moore has with her son (Eddie Redmayne)—it’s repugnant and creepy at times, yes, but the entire film becomes so clinical in its approach that the distancing device has done its job too well.

Kalin has done an amazing thing—taken a story that’s as titillating as this one and render it almost lifeless. It’s a disappointing entry, especially after such a long wait for those of us still savouring our first taste of Kalin.

Savage Grace opens
Friday, July 25

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