SAVAGE
GRACE
by Chris Knipp
Sometimes reality is not so much stranger than fiction as it is tackier--more
like a TV-serial melodrama. That's the truth illustrated in Tom Kalin's
polished but limp film Savage Grace,
about a plastic heir's matricide in London in 1972.
Adultery, incest, vulgar language--if you're rich enough, or the movie
they happen in is glossy enough, are these things all pretty much on
a par? Again, this makes you wonder. As in a TV serial, Savage Grace
shocks viewers indiscriminately on many levels, sets and costumes remaining
impeccable, so we'll stay tuned, and if not care, at least feel titillated.
When you see in the last few scenes what 
Barbara,
the mother, does to Tony, the son, and what Tony then does to Barbara,
you'll probably react, if only by looking away. But acts performed out
of boredom on screen may induce the same feeling in viewers, and other
more specific emotions are too little in evidence here. Though Tony
was judged to have committed his crime in a state of "diminished
capacity," his character is more the victim of diminished development,
his derangement less fully illustrated than his taste in bespoke tailoring.
His father Brooks (Stephen Dellane) is clearly frustrated with his own
lack of motivation, and his mother Barbara (Julianne Moore) is a pretentious
arriviste who used to be a clerk at Filene's department store. But the
way they talk is generic. They remain nice-looking--very nice-looking--actors
in beautiful costumes. They never quite develop into real people.
Tony Baekeland (Eddie Redmayne, an Old Etonian, in another evil preppy
role) is the young decadent great-grandson of Leo Baekeland, whose ur-plastic
Bakelite in its heyday was used for everything from atomic bomb casings
to Chanel jewelry. Each successive generation after the fortune was
made is, predictably, successively idler and more spoiled. Tony, whom
we first see in 1946 as a sweet-tempered babe, grows up watching his
parents, who are appropriately idle and spoiled--
but,
alas, not much else--fight and fight and then divorce. When Tony turns
out to like boys, his father runs off with his (Tony's) beautiful Spanish
girlfriend, Blanca (Elena Anaya), and his mother (Moore looking younger
and changing hair color as the decades roll by) beds her gay escort
Sam (Hugh Dancy), who's already been with Tony. Things are a bit complicated--but
in a way not, since it all happens in a bubble of wealth in New York,
Paris, Mallorca, and London where everything is easy, baths are leisurely,
and no one's badly groomed. I longed for the hand of Patricia Highsmith,
and maybe Philip Seymour Hoffman to give things an edge, to show that
life's messy even when you're loaded.
The
movie reproduces the Forties, Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies as
movies do, with clothes and hairstyles. It's hard to believe Barbara
would publicly use language quite this vile with Brooks in any of these
decades. The writers seem to forget that certain words were not used
by polite women till at least the mid-Sixties. Assuming Barbara did
address Brooks this way, it's hard to believe he'd have kept her on
as long as he did, since he doesn't seem to be under any external pressure
to do so. She, evidently, is deranged, but it's not clear why. Certainly
little details seem wrong. Barbara's' mispronunciation of various foreign
languages is right for a rich expatriate no doubt, but would the young
Tony (Barney Clark, Polanski's Oliver Twist) not know how to pronounce
école bilingue if he's studying in one? Living all his life abroad,
would he speak such perfect American?
Everything
happens, and yet nothing happens. When Tony commited his crime and his
voiceover said that a great burden has been lifted, I hoped Eddie Redmayne
would drop his too-perfect American accent, though of course he never
does. Redmayne is a coolly controlled actor, a master of the art of
seeming to hide emotion, but after doing several uppercrust wrongdoers,
maybe he deserves a different kind of role, in a better movie. Dillane,
Dancy, and above all Julianne Moore as the enveloping Mummy and verbally
abusive wife, all help give this glossy tripe more finish than the daytime
soaps. It's like some downgraded form of Masterpiece Theater,
or Ismail Merchant without Ismael or Merchant. But it's still tripe.
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
This is
nowhere near as good as Reversal of Fortune, Barbet Schroeder's
nuanced and engrossing study of posh wrongdoing. Something may have
been lost from the Baekeland story told in Natalie Robins and Steven
M. L. Aronson's eponymous book when it got filtered through Howard A.
Rodman's adaptation. Best known for his 1992 Swoon about the
Leopold and Loeb murders, Kalin reveals an unhealthy taste for gay and
lurid true-life stories. His plastic hasn't the resilience of Bakelite.
©2008 Chris Knipp
CineScene
