Whatever it takes to add appeal to a true story of an incestuous relationship that ends with murder, "Savage Grace" doesn't have it.
Based on the book "Savage Grace: The True Story of Fatal Relations in a Rich and Famous American Family" by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson, the drama follows the disturbed codependence of a jet-set mother and her son over 25 years.
Moneyed socialite Barbara Daly Baekeland was murdered by her son, Antony, in 1972. The film says Antony killed Barbara in retribution for smothering and seducing him.
The movie is director Tom Kalin's second dip into the true-crime genre. His debut, "Swoon" (1992), was based on the case of Leopold and Loeb, wealthy young students who kidnapped and killed a boy in 1924.
"Savage Grace" is a travelogue that zips through torturous moments in the lives of Barbara (Julianne Moore) and Antony (Eddie Redmayne). Family members, heirs to a plastics fortune, have little to do other than drive one another insane.
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The setting shifts from Spain to London, Paris and New York, but the result is always the same — Barbara controls and manipulates everyone around her, including Antony and her cold, cruel husband, Brooks (Stephen Dillane).
Redmayne plays the awkward, unconfident — and eventually sociopathic — Antony as a blank slate who struggles to find companionship outside of his suffocating mother.
With no sympathetic character to embrace (even the vulnerable Antony is too repulsive to get behind), you don't so much empathize as gawk and feel guilty for doing so.
"Savage Grace" is a grotesque waste of time about terrible people I'd rather not have known.
Savage Grace
*
• Rated: Not rated.
• Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane, Elena Anaya.
• Director: Tom Kalin.
• Family call: Not for kids.
• Running time: 97 minutes.
