Savage Grace

Review

Tom Kalin’s Savage Grace recounts the (true) cautionary tale of Barbara Daly Baekeland (Julianne Moore), a not too worldly but socially ambitious beauty whose abandonment by her husband (Stephen Dillane), dwindling finances, and�here’s the singular note�homophobia coalesced into one bad trip for her son, Tony (Eddie Redmayne). Always overmothered, the unambiguously gay young man became the repository of Barbara’s hunger for control. Why, she would convert him to nondeviant sexuality if she had to sidle into his lap and stick his willy into herself.

Kalin lays this out with a touch of Madame Tussauds�the film is archly posed, with a score (by Fernando Velázquez) that’s rich in portentous strings. (Is there a theremin in there? Probably my imagination.) But Howard A. Rodman’s script has a lot of juice, and the rhythms are so pregnant that the air vibrates with something, even if you’re not sure what. Moore is virtuosic when it comes to chewing the scenery while standing stock-still�perfect for the going-to-seed failed movie actress Barbara. Dillane�whose Leonard Woolf was the best thing in The Hours�is infectiously uncomfortable: You don’t entirely blame him for bolting. Redmayne is � queer, in the old sense: physically detached, with only his bulgy eyes signaling his inner panic. In its frigid way, Savage Grace is potent: It makes incest a state of mind. — David Edelstein

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New York Magazine Reviews

• David Edelstein's Full Review (6/2/08)