"Savage Grace" tells the incredible true story of Barbara Daly, who married above her class to Brooks Baekeland, the dashing heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune.
Savage Grace is not a film to enjoy watching. It is possible to enjoy the delicate filming technique and the top-class acting, but it is more a film to admire. Director Tom Kalin's second feature is the placid but dark true story of an incestuous relationship between American socialite Barbara Daly and her homosexual son Tony. This relationship comes about after Mr Daly, heir to the Bakelite fortune, runs off with his son's girlfriend, leaving Barbara furious and his son emotionally shaken. Right from the start Julianne Moore is sensational, and with her latest series of scouting-for-Oscars performances, this one tops the pile as one of her most devastatingly real. Her usually soft manner turns believably brittle as the confident Barbara, but the true discovery of this uneasy film is Eddie Redmayne (recently seen in Tess of the D"Urbervilles) who is perfectly cast as the confused son. The whole mess of relationships, although awkward and unsettling, still makes fascinating viewing. From his mother walking in on him while having sex with another young man, to a painfully hard to watch sex scene between him and mother, it is easy to understand Tony's reason for falling into insanity. It is Barbara who is the mystery here, a mystery which, although never quite fully explained, is still unnervingly evoked onscreen.
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Family crime drama focusing on the real-life murder of wealthy socialite Barbara Baekeland (Julianne Moore) by her son Anthony (Eddie Redmayne). Having married Brooks (Stephen Dillane), son and heir to the once wealthy Baekeland family, founders of Bakelite, Barbara (Moore) finally reached the exalted social circles she always aspired to. Although she suffered an unstable personality coupled with bouts of depression, things improved when the couple had a child together. The discovery that their son Anthony (Redmayne) was gay, however, caused great concern in his mother and outright hostility in his father. In a bizarre relationship, with no boundaries or privacy, and with every experience shared, Barbara tried unsuccessfully to 'cure' her son, even hiring girls to sleep with him. But when this approach failed to have the desired effect, she finally coerced Anthony into an incestuous relationship, one that was to lead ultimately to her death.
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