Lustrous, Glittering, Monied Dysfunction

Published: May 30, 2008

“Savage Grace,” Tom Kalin’s long-awaited second feature (after “Swoon”), swoons through a number of lovely, storied places on its way to a sad and sordid end. Narrated by Tony Baekeland (played in young adulthood by Eddie Redmayne), it begins in the post-World War II Manhattan of late-night dinners at the Stork Club and moves on to Paris in the ’50s and then to Spain (Cadaqués and Majorca, to be precise) in the late 1960s and London after that.
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Written by Howard A. Rodman, “Savage Grace” follows the true, appalling story of Tony and his parents, played by Stephen Dillane and Julianne Moore. Brooks Baekeland, heir to a plastics fortune (his grandfather invented Bakelite), is frustrated by his own lack of ambition and less than kind to his wife, Barbara. For her part, Barbara is impulsive and also somewhat pretentious, striving to jam herself into social niches where she won’t comfortably fit. Greeting a literary scholar who has come for lunch, she asks: “Was Proust truly a homosexual? Qu’est-ce que tu penses?”

That line, like so many others in Mr. Rodman’s script, is written and delivered with an arch, brittle self-consciousness that becomes oppressive over time. While it’s likely that the diction and phrasing of the dialogue approximates the idioms of rich expatriates during the decades in question, the characters still seem vague, stilted and unreal.

This is especially true of Barbara, whose volatile personality is at the heart of the story. She is, we infer, both victim and provocateur in her marriage, suffering from Brooks’s coldness even as she goes out of her way to inflame his contempt. Her relations with Tony range from neglectful to needy to downright monstrous.

But instead of a character, Ms. Moore presents a series of poses, phrases and disjointed emotions. The intriguingly epicene Mr. Redmayne is something of a cipher in the film, which is fine when Tony functions as the spectator and interpreter of parental melodrama. But by the time his own pathology comes to the foreground, his actions are less tragic than weird and mystifying.

Mr. Kalin, perhaps oppressed by a need to obey the chronology of the story, fails to infuse it with enough dramatic momentum or psychological gravity. Everything and everyone in “Savage Grace” looks utterly gorgeous — Ms. Moore even as she is coming undone, the tastefully appointed rooms she inhabits, the period-perfect clothes she wears — but the décor, rather than being the vehicle of high feeling in the camp-melodrama tradition to which the film aspires, suffocates and blurs every interesting emotion.

There is a degree of pleasure to be found in watching a slow-moving spectacle of privileged decadence. But your interest in the decline of the Baekelands as they wander down the path from sarcasm and social posturing to abandonment, incest and murder never rises above the level of prurience. Even as it tries to be suave and nonjudgmental, “Savage Grace” has some of the breathless salaciousness of Barbara’s question about Proust. It lays out the facts of the case with the false nonchalance of a seasoned gossip, professing not to be shocked by anything even as it expects you to be.

Bisexuality! Marijuana! Anal sex! A father who sleeps with his son’s girlfriend! A son who sleeps with his mother’s boyfriend! All of great intrinsic interest, to be sure, but “Savage Grace” doesn’t seem quite sure of how to communicate its own fascination with such doings, whether to convey shock, envy, pity or bemusement. Proust might have known what to do with the Baekelands, but Mr. Kalin and Mr. Rodman don’t make much more of them than the mess they apparently already were.

SAVAGE GRACE

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Directed by Tom Kalin; written by Howard A. Rodman, based on the book by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson; director of photography, Juanmi Azpiroz; edited by Mr. Kalin, John F. Lyons and Enara Goicoetxea; music by Fernando Vélazquez; production designer, Victor Molero; produced by Iker Monfort, Katie Rournel, Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon; released by IFC Films. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Julianne Moore (Barbara Baekeland), Stephen Dillane (Brooks Baekeland), Eddie Redmayne (Antony Baekeland), Elena Anaya (Blanca), Unax Ugalde (Black Jake), Belén Rueda (Pilar Durán) and Hugh Dancy (Seth).