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Savage Grace (2007)
26 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Chilling story, 27 July 2007
Author: Paul Martin from Melbourne, Australia
Having seen quite a few films produced by Christine Vachon, I recognised a similar aesthetic in this film. Vachon's films often portray unconventional sexuality or other challenging social themes, but in a stylised way that is more accessible to wider audiences than grittier art-house films. This film would make a terrific companion piece to Christophe Honoré's Ma mère, as it tackles similarly challenging themes, though it is based on a true story and is much more digestible for audiences. The parallels between these stories are remarkable.
Julianne Moore is an actress I admire and takes top billing. Her performance was as good as usual, portraying Barbara Daly Baekeland, wife of the Bakelite heir. Eddie Redmayne's portrayal of her homosexual son was for me the stand-out performance. The film is set in various countries - the US, France, Spain and England - and the visuals are excellent. It takes a while to get a handle on where the film wants to take us, but it culminates in a chilling end. Worth seeing for the brave risks it takes and succeeds in delivering.
The Melbourne International Film Festival screening I attended was introduced by the director, Tom Kalin.
31 out of 50 people found the following comment useful :-
Just one word: beautiful !, 22 May 2007
Author: rital06 from Cannes, France
Seen at the last Cannes Film Festival in the Directors' Forthnight selection. More than 15 minutes of applause followed the screening, in the presence of the director (Tom Kalin) and the main character (Julian Moore). Julian is excellent in characterizing Mrs Baekland (wife of Brooks Baekeland, the nephew of the inventor of Bakelite) throughout the lifetime of her child. The costumes, haircuts, settings are just perfect. This real story is told with a lot of respect and even if the subject is rather extreme it is presented in a very fair way. The selection of the locations is also excellent and ranges between half of Europe. Well done Tom ! Definitely worth the waiting.
Cheers, Rital
7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
A provocative film just for the sake of being provocative, 6 April 2008
Author: Gordon-11 from Hong Kong
This film is about a rich but dysfunctional family trying to hang on to each other, ultimately destroying everyone's happiness.
I saw this film only because Julianne Moore is in it. Moore is a fine actress who starred in a lot of high quality films. I was hoping "Savage Grace" would be as good as her other films, but I was disappointed.
I find the story slow and poorly developed. Mr & Mrs Baekeland's poor relationship is satisfactorily portrayed, but from this point onwards the film goes downhill. Things happen without buildup and are poorly explained. The final ending is simply ridiculous, as the unexpected twist on Tony's mental state feels very contrived and unconvincing.
"Savage Grace" could have been a thought provoking and engaging drama. Instead, it fails to be engaging, and the characters not sympathetic. In my opinion, the story unfolds provocatively just for the sake of being provocative.
5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Don't be afraid, it's human(e), 28 October 2007
Author: Comandante666 from Vienna, Austria
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
The most disturbing fact about this movie is that it is actually based on a true story. Though it appears to be pretty well known at least in the US I so far haven't had heard of it. Thus it probably struck me twice as hard.
The subject though is familiar and reminds of ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles and his famous play 'Oedipus Rex'. But this is only a very basic resemblance. The story which evolves in several steps around the life of Tony Baekland is set in several countries of Europe between 1946 and 1972.
The environment in which Tony grows up is a very wealthy American bourgeois family which seems to exist pretty independent of much of the outer worlds developments. At one point in the movie Tony reads a statement by his famous grandfather which I'd like to cite from my memory: 'Money allows you to not have to live with the consequences of your mistakes.' Although Tony in the movie doesn't seem very content with the meaning, I guess it summarizes the behavior of the characters very well. They are revolving around themselves and soon the ultimate catastrophe begins.
Tony discovers his homosexuality at a very early stage and is thereupon loosing his connection to his father, Brooks, whom he already had described as being cold and dark, at the very beginning of the movie. Eventually Brooks takes off with Tonys first girlfriend and from now on he is mostly seen only from the distance. Tonys relationship with his mother in contrast is exceptionally close and shows no apparent privacy of either of the two characters. It develops to a full incestuous act at the end of the movie that finally also leads to matricide and the arrest of Tony.
It is very hard to describe this film other than as irritating. But it never goes so far as to repel the viewer. Though it may not be sympathy you feel for the characters it might very well be empathy or at least pity. They are very well described in their perfectness and simultaneous vulnerability and resourcefully embodied by the outstanding performances of the main actors.
Apart of the dramatic content, the movie also captivates because of its beautiful costumes and requisites. I hardly like movies just because of their visual impression. But this one I must say was absolutely impressive in this case. I was stunned by only watching the set and the beautiful people moving around there. It somehow reminded my of the film version of 'Death in Venice'. Don't ask me why, it's just a feeling...
Anyways 'Savage Grace' is a very recommendable movie and I was glad I had the opportunity to watch it yesterday. The director Tom Kalín was present and was kind enough to answer some questions. Thank you Tom, for a very decent movie about very indecent people.
6 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Quite good, actually, 31 March 2008
Author: jackojacko
The film is different. It does stand out amongst hundreds of "seen-this-before" flicks.
Juliane Moore is great, of course.
One of her best performances, actually.
The film has the atmosphere that is hard to find these days; moves kind of slowly but the tension continually grows so you know something (bad) is going to happen eventually although you have no idea what.
Cannot understand certain opinions here which, I have a feeling, have been written without even watching the film or, simply, for some unknown reasons, out of spite.
See it. It is really good.
Wonderful!, 26 April 2008
Author: Soha Bayoumi from Boston, MA
Amazing movie! One of the best I've ever seen! I saw it in the Boston Independent Film Festival and was stunned by its beauty, wonderful colors, excellent cinematography (every scene is a painting!), thorough character portrayal, amazing costumes and incredible concern with details. It is so honest, visually captivating and esthetically touching! The script is just perfect, not a superfluous word! The casting is so very successful! Julianne Moore's performance is, in my opinion, the best in her entire career! Eddie Redmayne is just perfect for the role and he does it beautifully! This movie is definitely a must-see!
1 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Mother and Child Reunion, 6 March 2008
Author: Martin Bradley (MOscarbradley@aol.com) from Derry, Ireland
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
There is no denying that Tom Kalin's first feature film since "Swoon", a gap of some 15 years, is both intelligent and well made, (it looks like it cost a lot more than it actually did with Kalin making singularly good use of his Spanish locations to convey various cities and resorts). However, it's also a particularly unpleasant picture dealing with very unpleasant people. That Barbara Baekeland and her son, Tony, might have been suffering, almost certainly were suffering from some form of mental illness that allowed their excessive and ultimately incestuous behavior to go unchecked, does little to redeem them in the viewer's eyes. The matter-of-fact nature of their relationship and the relationships they shared with those who, moth-like flickered too close to their ultimately deadly flame, only adds to the feeling of revulsion. Still, Kalin doesn't condemn them. If anything, he treats them with a degree of sympathy they hardly merit.
If their story were fictitious it might have been passed off as a slick, if sick, bit of exploitation, (gay sex, incestuous sex, gay and incestuous sex combined), but it is based in fact. Barbara was the socialite wife of Brooks Baekeland of Bakelite fame and the movie covers that period in her life from the birth of her son up to her early and violent death. Consequently, it is also the story of her son Tony, cosseted by his mother, homosexual and finally diagnosed schizophrenic. It is, therefore, a tragedy of lives wasted and lives lost but despite a terrific performance by Julianne Moore as Barbara and a very promising one from Eddie Redmayne as Tony it never engages us. By the time it reaches its undeniably shocking denouement I had switched off. Unfortunately the sour taste it left was harder to shake.
3 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
The great Julianne Moore in a wasted opportunity, 2 November 2007
Author: anitagil from United Kingdom
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
I have to give this some marks for the acting all round, and a great performance by Julianne Moore - and I suppose for the production values. But the directing, script and angling of this true, extraordinary tale of an American family's dynastic downfall leaves the story essentially untold. As I understood it from the excellent book, Savage Grace, the mother, Barbara is a pushy, energetic socialite from the other side of the tracks who clashes with her husband's bitterness as the decadent, worthlessly cultured scion of the great Bakelite family. Her chosen 'place in the sun' (movie title of Dreisler's American Tragedy) is with the rich bohemian set and her energy is set at revitalising the family. Her husband's talent being limited to making sarcastic quips, she pushes at her son to show real talent as an artist, which he doesn't possess, and sleeps with him in order to 'cure' him of homosexuality. Although displaying the hubris and feral criminality of a Greek tragic heroine, she (and her son) are in a sense victims of a great family's fall from grace. But the film meanders through sensual details of the boy's gay affairs, shows the husband as charming, gives little sense of the dynastic background, throws away much pointless dialogue without capturing the flavour of rich bohemia, and has just one dramatic scene, the crucial one of incest and murder. I was disappointed because I know Majorca, where much of the real-life drama was set, as well as the social scene and some of the people peripheral to the drama; but more so because this American tragedy cries out for an intense and absorbing study of wealth, social ambition and the tragic consequences of a family falling from the heights of scientific, commercial and cultural achievement to incest and murder. It's not really about watching attractive gay people lounging about in the sun and a few name-dropping suppers.
6 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Did I really just watch that?, 26 January 2008
Author: Mack Hamilton (poipulani@aol.com) from Park City, Utah
I saw the film last night, I was not appalled by the content like some others, but I felt that the film was delivered in such a way that it was impossible to be moved by its story. The single greatest contributor to this was the films out-of-place score. The two scenes that should have been the most powerful moments in the filmed were dubbed over by a score that sounded like something in a ballroom in the 1910's. The acting was something that I would expect in a teen slasher film not a character driven period piece that focuses on the actors in the film. The film also moved at a pace that was slightly slower than a baby snail, it was the kind of movie that really makes you wonder why it is that it made it past pre-production.
The bottom Line is some films should just not be made, Savage Grace was one of those films.
00/10
15 out of 40 people found the following comment useful :-
Vastly overrated, hugely disappointing, 29 October 2007
Author: fluffyrona from United Kingdom
Having read the other comments on this forum, I went to the London Film Festival yesterday full of anticipation, and was rudely and thoroughly disappointed by a film full of plot holes, pretentious twaddle and dreadful gaps where nothing happened.
Julianne Moore is the only guiding light in a sea of dark and dreadful film-making - I wasn't the only one to think this, as a very famous RSC actor who was sitting in front of me walked out after an hour. Simply dreadful, and if people think that producing pretty screen shots can compensate for a film that makes no sense and is without any meaningful script, then it's a real case of the Emperor's New Clothes.
After 15 years in creation, as the producer wanted us to believe in the pre-screening commentary, it's a shame they didn't take time to give this film more pace and more purpose. A really dreadful film.
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