SAVAGE GRACE
Directed by Tom Kalin. Starring Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane, Eddie Redmayne. Opens Fri, Sept 12.
*

Savage Grace is based on the depressingly true story of Barbara Daly Baekeland and her son Anthony. Barbara, a former actress, was the wife of Brooks Baekeland, the heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune, and one of the more glamourous, decadent couples in New York high society during the 1940s and ’50s, with Barbara’s tendency toward excessive drinking and unpredictable behaviour giving their reputation an attractively scandalous veneer. (It probably didn’t hurt that the guest list at the Baekelands’ parties included people like Salvador Dalí, Dylan Thomas, and Tennessee Williams.)

Brooks divorced Barbara in 1963 — an act that managed to betray both Barbara and Tony at once, since the woman he left Barbara to marry was Tony’s former lover, whom Brooks seduced into his bed right under Tony’s nose. Barbara and Tony’s relationship, which had always been creepily close, became even ickier when the increasingly unstable Barbara took it upon herself to “cure” Tony’s emerging homosexuality, at one point even sleeping with him herself. The whole sordid story came to an end in 1972 when Tony killed Barbara in her London flat with a kitchen knife.

What a lurid, unpleasant little tale, and what a tedious film director Tom Kalin has made from it. Savage Grace is a bafflingly dull movie — leadenly paced, with even the most appalling scenes filmed and acted with a curious sense of detachment. Perhaps Kalin deserves credit for resisting the urge to film this story like an exploitative TV-movie; perhaps he’s trying to force the viewer to experience these scenes through the bored, enervated eyes of the people participating in them.

But his strategy results in a film that seems designed to frustrate viewers rather than fascinate them: we never get inside Barbara Baekeland’s head or understand what’s motivating her to behave in such appalling ways. Is she acting out against her husband or is she consumed with self-hatred? Is she trying to help her son or hurt him? Is she a sociopath or just a drunk? Julianne Moore — looking even more pale and bloodless than she usually does — gives what I guess you’d have to call a “brave” performance (what other big-name actress would be willing to do a movie that climaxes with an extended incest scene?), but she’s playing a completely unsympathetic cipher. If her wardrobe weren’t so gorgeous, her scenes wouldn’t contain a single moment of pleasure.

In Savage Grace’s final 15 minutes, Kalin finally gets around to showing us the two elements of the story — the incest and the murder — that most people know about going into it, and again, I suppose it’s somewhat admirable that he makes these scenes appropriately bleak and uncomfortable to watch. This section is somewhat reminiscent of the doom-laden ending of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, with Jeremy Irons’ drug-addicted twins stumbling around their apartment, as if their entire world has shrunk to the size of a few filthy rooms. But you cared about the twins in that movie and Irons’ empathetic performance made their descent into the abyss deeply tragic. Savage Grace just leaves you bored and queasy and feeling ten times worse than you did when you went in. Is there a prize for the least exhilarating movie of the year?