Savage Grace

Directed by: Tom Kalin

Review by Roberto Azula

Neither savage nor graceful, Tom Kalin’s ponderous and poorly edited Savage Grace is a sloppy attempt at Reversal of Fortune, minus the coherent story. The film attempts to slide by with snazzy 50s and 60s haute culture and fashion, complete with an art deco typeface denoting each time period and glamorous locale. But sorry, Mr. Kalin, I ain’t falling for it. The stilted delivery of every line of dialog sounds straight out of some badly directed high school play, and the motivations of the characters’ actions remain murky and illogical. Okay, we can see that idle, useless tycoon Brooks Baekeland and his wife Barbara’s marriage is on the rocks. But why? You tell me, I couldn’t fathom why. Maybe they just had too much money. I heard too much money can strain a marriage. Then their precious son Antony, replete with pouting lips and freckled chest, has a girlfriend who ends up with his father (oh, that happened during a cutaway scene), has some homosexual relationships, and then as homosexuals in film often do, goes psycho and has sex with his mother, stabs her to her death, and orders Chinese take out, all in one scene. Why? Again, your guess is as good as mine. The movie does not point to any prior wacko behavior, unless you count homosexuality and burying heartfelt letters to his father in a flowerbed. Okay, maybe the latter is a little nutty, but not mother screwing and mother killing nutty. And well, I hate to be one to point out the elephant in the room but … Julianne Moore is probably the least convincing femme fatale since Margaret Cho. No, no, I’m not saying Moore is an elephant! I’m just saying … well, if she were my mother, I still wouldn’t have sex with her.