On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 173/196 |
Max Braden |
The original crime may have been a page turner in the newspapers at the time, but I didn't find anything interesting in the movie. Pretty much every aspect of it was wholly unlikable. |
Alright! It’s another creepy, based-on-a-true-story movie about an incestuous relationship between mother and son! Why, the box office potential for this is off the charts! Okay, given that this movie’s budget is not even $5 million, that’s certainly not what the project is about. Instead, Savage Grace attempts to humanize the life of Barbara Daly Baekeland, a retired London model whose emotional instability was well known in social circles.
Baekeland was a sexual deviant who would constantly throw her affairs in the face of her long suffering husband, Brooks Baekeland. Eventually, he would leave her for another woman. Part of the stress in their relationship stemmed from Barbara’s creepily close relationship with her son, Antony. Bothered by his homosexuality, she frequently taunted him too with tales of lust from her daily life. Basically, she was a walking Penthouse Letters who narrated her own stories for family members. It’s just as whacked out as it sounds.
Over time, Barbara developed an obsession with her son’s sex life, determining that she must bring him back to the boy/girl side of intimacy. She began to pay women to sleep with him, growing more and more frustrated by his refusal to do so. Eventually, she came to the conclusion that there was only one woman in the world who could seduce him. So, she coaxed out his inner Oedipus. After the conclusion of their incestuous act, the already mentally unstable boy (ain’t genetics a bitch?) held a grudge about the creepy thing his mother had just got him to do. So, he stabbed her. Before the body had grown cold, Antony realized he needed a snack. He was ordering Chinese food when the police arrived and discovered the new corpse. It’s a sunny tale all around, isn’t it?
Because people are too happy in their own lives, IFC Films has made sure to film this dreary tale of bad people doing bad things to one another. Indie darling Julianne Moore stars in the role of model/sex addict/bored wife/son seducer. If you want to see her in a smutty role without wanting to kill yourself by the end of the movie, BOP recommends Boogie Nights. If you are sold on the idea of watching a family’s implosion straight down to the incest and matricide, well, we think you probably want to go back on your happy pills and give your therapist a call. BOP is worried about you and wants you to get the help you need. If you don’t, it might be you ordering Chinese food while standing over a parent’s dead body. (David Mumpower/BOP)
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