Her Barbara is sensual dangerous and unpredictable.
Nevertheless Moore–with her flaming red hair and open sexuality–is still a treat to watch. We never get the feeling we’re watching real life unfold as most of these characters speak like they are in a stage production. Unfortunately the stilted dialogue and tone of the piece don’t do her any favors. Again in Savage Grace she proves herself willing to do anything and go further than most. There is no question Julianne Moore is perhaps the most courageous certainly most daring actress of her generation. The film details her pathetic attempts at presenting herself as something she’s not as she carries on the unnatural relationship– which eventually leads to tragic consequences. As the story spans years ranging from 1946 to 1972 dad disappears into his own world of work and affairs while Barbara becomes increasingly lonely desperate and clingy–entering into an incestuous tryst with her now grown son ( Eddie Redmayne) a homosexual. Soon the birth of their only child Tony turns their union upside down as the boy becomes uncommonly close with his mother and remains a failure in his father’s eyes. Aronson Savage Grace is a true story of a societal poseur Barbara Daly ( Julianne Moore) who climbs her way into a different class by marrying Brookes Baekeland ( Stephen Dillane) heir to a plastics fortune. However, if I never again have to hear Tony Baekeland simper, “I love you, Mommy,” that will be perfectly alright with me.Based on an award winning book by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. It’s also well acted, as Moore, Dillane, and Redmayne are all capable actors. In its defense, I concede that the picture is quite pretty the film spans continents and decades, providing lush scenery and beautiful costumes for them all. It is viscerally, painfully hard to watch. The disintegration of the family results in Mommy and Daddy’s affairs, theft of their son’s lovers, threesomes, and a case of incest so sick it would make Oedipus gouge his eyes out all over again.
If the film doesn’t sound too bad thus far, rest assured that it is. Tony, as the target of his mother’s manipulation and his father’s neglect, grows into a properly creepy young man. Tony Baekeland (Eddie Redmayne) becomes the inheritor of his parents’ neuroses, which is quite a lot of baggage. Surrounded by writers and artists, the couple run into the problem of many wealthy people who haven’t had to earn their fortune– they have no great function, no great achievement of their own to point to (listen up, Paris Hilton). Brooks, whose grandfather was a renowned inventor, has never lived up to his potential. Barbara married into a reputable family name and constantly overcompensates by putting on airs. Further undermining their already volatile union is an unshakable feeling of inferiority. Theirs is a marriage of opposites: hers a violent temper, his a cool indifference. Married to the heir of the Baekland Plastics family, she jockeys for social supremacy, often dragging her husband Brooks (Stephen Dillane) along kicking and screaming. Narrated by her son Tony, “Savage Grace” is the tale of Barbara Daly (Julianne Moore), a phenomenal beauty whose talent for cunning and desire to claw her way to the top of the aristocratic ladder rivals that of Scarlett O’Hara. Based on a true story, the book version garnered awards, but the celluloid version is nothing short of cringe inducing.
“Savage Grace” dresses like an epic, sweeping tragedy but is actually little more than a melodramatic soap opera that produces so many suds you could bathe in it. To be sure, it’s a very pretty, well acted production however, that doesn’t make up for the fact that I hated every minute of it. It’s hard to know where to begin with this movie.