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'Savage Grace' savage but with little grace

By Mina Hochberg | amNewYork movie critic

12:13 PM EDT, May 29, 2008

SAVAGE GRACE, based on the award winning book, tells the incredible true story of Barbara Daly, who married above her class to Brooks Baekeland, the dashing heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune. Beautiful, red-headed and charismatic, Barbara -- played by Julianne Moore -- is still no match for her well-bred husband. The birth of the coupleÂs only child, Tony, rocks the uneasy balance in this marriage of extremes. Tony -- played by Eddie Redmayne -- is a failure in his fatherÂs eyes. As he matures and becomes increasingly close to his lonely mother, the seeds for a tragedy of spectacular decadence are sown. (handout)

Usually, when a movie plunges into such disturbing, lurid depths as "Savage Grace," it takes a compelling character to convince you his or her story was worth telling. But the characters here are too vaguely etched to satisfy any cravings for insight into their clearly troubled psychologies.

Based on the true story of Barbara Baekeland ( Julianne Moore), who was murdered in 1972 at the hands of her son, Tony (Eddie Redmayne), the film is a relentlessly brooding account of infidelity, family dysfunction and incest. Barbara Baekeland was the wife of Brooks Baekeland (Stephen Dillane), heir to the Bakelite plastic fortune. When her husband leaves her for a younger, less explosive woman, Barbara's life begins to revolve heavily around her homosexual son, who seems perfectly fine with having his life revolved around.

The film proceeds as a sensational chronology of dark events, from wrist-slitting to frantically needy beddings to, at last, the consummation of incest. It all goes down in a blur of wrongness, with barely any concrete indications of how this mother and son came to be so messed up. It's clear they're depressed and aimless in their ridiculously wealthy lives, and that Barbara possibly doted on Tony too much as a child, but it isn't until the film's final scenes that a streak of ill will emerges between the two. Barbara suddenly, out of the blue, takes a strong stand against Tony's homosexuality -- so strong, she seduces him in an attempt to convert him. And Tony, equally out of the blue, adopts an accusatory, schizophrenic personality. All this anger and antipathy remains woefully inert through most of the movie. If it had bubbled to the surface, oh, an hour earlier, then maybe this would have been a worthy historical profile instead of a cheap-feeling bit of fluff.

Savage Grace Directed by Tom Kalin. Starring Julianne Moore, Eddie Redmayne, Stephen Dillane, Hugh Dancy