Magnificent Moore Tears Disappointing Grace to Shreds

When she’s on her game, there may be no better actress in Hollywood than Julianne Moore. Such is the case in Tom Kalin’s (Swoon) new movie Savage Grace, the two-time Oscar-nominee dominating the film so completely it is absolutely impossible to think of it without her. She bites into her role with such delectable relish, such profound and intractable gusto, watching her work is an outright joy. Her performance, in a word, is magnificent, and whenever she’s on-screen this intricately layered psychological melodrama is as fascinating and as mesmerizing as anything else 2008 has produced.

Julianne Moore is a force of nature in IFC Films' Savage Grace

Unfortunately the actress isn’t in every scene and when she disappears the picture, based on the acclaimed book by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson, grinds to an almost infuriating halt. It is as if the energy derived from her ferocious portrait of a woman desperate for attention, status and love doesn’t bleed into the other portions of the tale. More, the final act is so gruesomely creepy, so brutally unsettling, Kalin almost dares viewers to look away in horrified disgust, and as much as I admired the singularity of the director’s vision the fact I didn’t have an emotional attachment to anyone other than Moore made it awfully hard to care about what was going on.

And what is going on, you might ask? Based on true events, the film follows the bourgeois lives of Barbara Daly (Moore) and Brooks Baekeland (Stephen Dillane) from the early days of their marriage in 1946 to the final tragic strains of its death in 1972. In-between there are ups, downs and a monstrously carnal search for affection and social significance that takes the pair and their son Tony (Eddie Redmayne) across the globe from New York, Paris, Cadaques, Mallorca and London.

What happens as the decades fly by literally must be seen to be believed, the couple’s son growing up to be a pansexual viper feeding off of the love and affection of all those around him. When his parent’s ultimately break-up, Brooks leaving Barbara for the boy’s Spanish girlfriend Blanca (Elena Anaya) no less, it has a devastating effect on Tony, the man growing dangerously close to his needy mother in ways bordering on the incestuous.

Beautifully photographed, designed and never slow, nonetheless Savage Grace does not offer up emotional lifeline to any of its characters save for Barbara, and that only happened because of the sheer force of Moore’s indomitable will. Howard A. Rodman’s (the forthcoming August) screenplay is big on exterior details and small on the interior ones. He strands the actors, forcing them to play everything so closeted and so close to the vest breaking through their armor is darn near impossible. In fact, it’s downright infuriating, so much of my time watching the film spent wringing my hands in angst hoping all this subtlety would pay off in some explosively unexpected way.

The problem is that it doesn’t, and even without knowing the story (or having read the book, for that matter) it doesn’t exactly come as a shock what ultimately happens here. It certainly doesn’t help that Tony (admittedly well played by the gaunt, eerily lithe Redmayne) is a bit of a freak right from his introduction as a young child, the script pounding home the dangers of his intimacy issues far too concretely to ever make the man’s ultimate choices anything of a surprise.

I don’t think saying that people of this time period kept their emotions and their feelings largely to themselves in the pursuit of maintaining their societal image is a good excuse for all this detachment, either. Moore’s Barbara is as cold and as calculating and as frigid as anyone and yet the hurtful desperate search for affection and status hidden behind her eyes is intimately palpable. I could feel everything the woman was going through down to the last minute detail, and while I’ve already said just how brilliant the actress is that doesn’t mean the other actors couldn’t have made more of their own characters then they ultimately do.

Still, this movie is almost impossible to take your eyes off of. Kalin has a gift for crafting unsettling ambiances that grab hold of the viewer and gets deeply under their skin. Couple that with a performance from Moore the likes of which we’ll probably be talking about for the rest of the year and Savage Grace immediately becomes something more important and worthy of discussion then it would otherwise merit.  

For my part, I can’t say I’d tell people to go see it (not even a matinee) but I’d certainly agree that if they do they’re not likely to forget the film anytime soon. How many other features released in 2008 can you say that about?

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  2008 SIFF Blog by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  2008 Seattle International Film Festival Home Page
-  Savage Grace Theatrical Trailer