Julianne Moore has the power to trick you into thinking her presence in a movie automatically makes it good. But if you look at her career over the last 10 years, she’s made as many disasters (Evolution, Freedomland, Next for God’s sake) as genuinely good movies (The Hours, Far From Heaven, Children of Men). And even though Savage Grace finds Moore returning to the kind of arty, daring movies that have made her so beloved, it by no means makes up for all those horrible misfires. It’s not a disaster, but Savage Grace so muddled and self-important that none of its characters, not even with Moore’s ferocious performance, can take shape. In a character study, that’s a bad thing.
Moore stars as Barbara Baekeland, a self-made social climber who married Brooks Baekeland (Stephen Dillane), the heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune. After their son is born the family decamps to post-war Europe—it’s the 1950s, and everyone is free to be aristocratic again. Barbara is clearly attention-hungry, and now that’s she’s snagged her husband she feels free to flirt and even run off with other men within her high social circle. As if that weren’t enough, though, she even has eyes for her barely-pubescent son Tony (played as a teenager by Eddie Redmayne).
Yes, this is one of those stories about Big Bad Mamas, this one being a bit loonier than the rest. Eventually Brooks leaves Barbara for a young Spanish woman whom Tony brought home at first, leaving Barbara and Tony living in seaside luxury. Eventually a “walker,” a gay man who escorts society ladies, named Sam joins them, and since he’s played by a dapper Hugh Dancy, it’s only a matter of time before Barbara and Tony both give in to their desire for him. And then they give into their desire for each other. Say it with me now: Eeeeeewwwww.
Savage Grace seems to want to analyze what made Barbara bestow these inappropriate affections on her son, and what made her gay son, in turn, accept them and eventually kill her for them. But director Tom Kalin never really manages to scratch below surface level, focusing on the gorgeous seaside locations and leaving the actors to overact (Moore) or underact (Redmayne) for the camera. It’s a pretty strange lifestyle we’re been thrown into here, and no one does enough to help us understand exactly how we got here.
