You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?: Savage Grace

Sometimes ignorance is bliss. A couple weeks ago, one of my friends recommended I watch Savage Grace (2007). I vaguely remembered the title- and once I recalled Julianne Moore was in it- I was good to go. I would watch La Moore poop in a can- and for all I know, that happens in the upcoming Bel Canto (2018). What I'd forgotten was that this was the somewhat infamous based-on-a-true-story film about an uncomfortably close relationship between a mother and son. I didn't look any further into it than that- and I'm glad I didn't- cause the ending made my jaw drop.

Savage Grace recounts the life of our narrator, Antony Baekeland (Eddie Redmayne), heir to the Bakelite fortune and apple of his omnipresent mother's eye. Barbara (the aforementioned not-pooping Julianne Moore) has shifted her affections to her son because her icy husband (the nicely built Stephen Dillane) is tired of her social-climbing and philandering. As Antony tells us, "I was the steam when hot meets cold." As we watch Antony's story unfold, we realize that steam can cloud and confuse what we see.

What made Savage Grace so interesting to me was the classic style in which director Tom Kalin shot it. I don't just mean the beautifully realized period costumes and exotic European hotspots from the Forties to the Seventies that populate the film. For a film that is so much about sex, we see very little of the act. Glances, touches, and cuts to "the next morning" take the place of our seeing what actually happens when passions become unmanageable.

Classic movies did this to avoid the evil red pen of Joseph I. Breen. But Kalin does it to allow our imaginations to fill-in the blanks. When we do catch these moments, Kalin focuses more on faces than on bodies. It is not about the act- it is about what is going on internally for this fucked-up family.

Objects also receive unusual focus in the camera frame. Whether it's the dog collar of a long-dead pet, a record player, the serving of morning tea, or the accoutrements of a failed suicide attempt, objects hold the permanence in this story over the people. This is after all a memory play- and memory thrives on physical anchors. Throw in some mirrors and portraits and in style, Savage Grace feels like a Minnellian or Sirkian melodrama but with content that far exceeds anything classic Hollywood could have produced.

Moore is absolutely magnetic as the emotionally starving Barbara, and Redmayne gives a wounded, natural performance free of the tics and tricks he's picked up lately. If you don't know about the true story, I recommend waiting to research it until after you've seen the film. Trust me. Give yourself a little surprise in a world that has become reliably insane.