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Savage Grace
IFC First Take


7.0

based on 28 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 9 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

Internet Movie Database

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane, Eddie Redmayne, Unax Ugalde, and Belen Rueda

Savage Grace, based on the award winning book, tells the incredible true story of Barbara Daly, who married above her class to Brooks Baekeland, the dashing heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune. Beautiful, red-headed and charismatic, Barbara is still no match for her well-bred husband. The birth of the couple's only child, Tony, rocks the uneasy balance in this marriage of extremes. Tony is a failure in his father's eyes. As he matures and becomes increasingly close to his lonely mother, the seeds for a tragedy of spectacular decadence are sown. Spanning 1946 to 1972, the film unfolds in six acts. The Baekelands' pursuit of social distinction and the glittering 'good life' propels them across the globe. We follow their heady rise and tragic fall against the backdrop of New York, Paris, Cadaques, Mallorca and London. (IFC First Take)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Steven M.L. Aronson (book) Natalie Robins (book) Howard A. Rodman
DIRECTED BY:	Tom Kalin
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: December 23, 2008 Theatrical: May 30, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	97 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Spain \| USA \| France
LANGUAGE(S):	English \| French \| Spanish

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

If you might wish the film got deeper under the skin of the characters, you also feel grateful for the fact that you'll never get closer to them than watching it.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Part of the film's failure to arouse real horror is the languid direction; not enough seems to be at stake emotionally.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's still primarily a showcase and offbeat star vehicle for Moore. It's a bravura role and she brings it off with a chilling malevolence and a strange, disjointed vulnerability that almost, but not quite, makes her sympathetic.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The film walks the fine line between exploitation and empathy to cast a chilly, memorable spell.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Money, madness, incest and murder! Just the recipe for a twisted mesmerizer of a movie, if it doesn't creep you out.

The Hollywood Reporter Bernard Besserglik

U.S. viewers may be put off by its tangled sexual motifs and find its implied social critique a little close to the bone. But even Stateside, Julianne Moore, in her most challenging role in years, will win plaudits and attract mature audiences to a thoroughly absorbing and polished piece of work.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Howard A. Rodman's script has a lot of juice, and the rhythms are so pregnant that the air vibrates with something, even if you're not sure what.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Julianne Moore proves game for anything in this pitch-black true-crime reconstruction.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The director, Tom Kalin, stages acid duels, but he should have provided more psychological structure. Though Moore, a great actress, turns fury into verbal music, we're never quite sure what's driving her.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Savage Grace should have the force of Greek tragedy, but Kalin's chamber drama feels curiously stifling and flat, and Moore's volatile turn isn't enough to quicken its pulse.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Living these lives, for these people, must have been sad and tedious, and so, inevitably, is their story, and it must be said, the film about it.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A chilly inquest into very bad behavior, Savage Grace is presented to us like an entrée at a five-star French restaurant. It's decadence under glass.

Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen

It's tough to think of another film in which sex between a mother and her son is not necessarily the worst thing that happens.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Rarely has appalling, reckless behavior been so soporific as in Savage Grace.

Variety Jay Weissberg

Scripter Howard A. Rodman's treatment of an enthralling book is more a series of vignettes rather than a fully connected work, and helmer Tom Kalin seems unable to decide how much Sirkian melodrama to introduce into the heady mix. Gone are the reasons to be fascinated with these people, merely replaced with maddeningly over-arch dialogue and struggles with characterization.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Has everything one could ask of a true-crime expose.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The film includes graphic omnisexual and incestuous couplings and has an air of free-floating dread but, especially given its subject matter, it's oddly vacuous – it rarely takes hold emotionally even when its people hit bottom with a resounding thud.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Savage Grace comes up bland and seems to go nowhere in particular.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Savage Grace is a thoroughly disturbing story, told in a detached style rendering the overall experience an unsettling blend of lurid and vacuous.

Film Threat Jamie Tipps

To be sure, it's a very pretty, well acted production; however, that doesn't make up for the fact that I hated every minute of it.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

"Grace" may be based on a true story, but barely a moment in it feels real.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

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.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

You can almost smell the desperation in the twisted psychosexuality of Savage Grace.

Empire Staff (Not credited)

Savage Grace is simply hysterical: a film as harsh, brittle and unbalanced as its characters.

New York Post Kyle Smith

For all its outré set pieces it never rises above the level of pretentious trash.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

What Kalin fails to provide in the slightest degree is energy. The movie just sloshes along in a heavy, slightly overdone way.

Village Voice Jim Ridley

A tawdry nighttime soap that marvels without insight at its characters' despicable behavior: It squanders a major performance by Moore.

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

An unbroken flow of sad or nasty incidents.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Michael H gave it a6:
Movie could've been great if not for several major flaws. Clocking in at around 90 minutes, it was way too short to instill any story and could've benefited from at least another half hour of development. The story is very disjoint and events and characters are forgotten as suddenly as they were introduced. The movie is basically just a series of powerful scenes, all independent of each other however. Julianne Moore also plays pretty much the same thing she always plays. Fairly disappointing.

Jay H gave it a6:
Julianne Moore is terrific as always, stylish, perhaps too much so. The art direction and costumes are great. The main problem with the film is that none of the characters are appealing. But, it's worth watching.

David M gave it a1:
Some of the scenes feature brilliant acting and the film has great visual and aural appeal, but I never felt emotionally invested in any of the characters - I felt like the director was more interested in flirting with alienating the audience with his characters' flaws and indecency than in weaving meaning into the story.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
An amazing film. It pulls you so deeply into the story. Suspenseful and ultimately shattering. Tom Kalin is a great filmmaker.

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Savage Grace IFC First Take

Savage Grace
IFC First Take