Best movie ever!

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The picture was made by adapting a biography about the death of Barbara Baekeland. Barbara rose into wealth and social status by marrying Brooks Baekeland, the heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune. The period under consideration is circa 1946, and the birth of Tony, to 1972 and the death of Barbara. The film is about stormy relationships: Tony and Barbara, Barbara and Brooks, Barbara and whomever she was intimate with.The action of the film comes in islands. The first island is around 1946 when Tony was born. We get to know Barbara and Brooks: she is skilled at maintaining and growing social networks in the upper class; he is an accomplished explorer, adventurer, and linguist. The next island is in 1959 in Spain. Tony is 13, has some skill in languages, and enjoys long, detailed conversations with Barbara. Barbara continues to spend time and energy on affairs. The parents find out that Tony has gay leanings. In 1967, Tony is tall, skinny, skilled at the guitar. He and his father talk a bit more clearly than usual, the main subject being Barbara and women in general. Soon he meets Blanca, and not long thereafter spends a night with her. Barbara tells her later that she thought he was delivering Blanca rather like a cat delivers a bird to its owner.In 1968, Brooks and Blanca decide to go somewhere together. Barbara catches up with them, and makes a very public scene. Tony and Jake get 'caught' by Barbara when she gets back from the airport. About this time, Sam enters the movie as a 'walker,' a homosexual man who escorts a married woman while her husband is away. How could this get more volatile?The setup for a bad ending is well established. As time goes forward to 1972 in London, the family dynamics get even worse. Just how do we get to the sad conclusion?----Scores-----Cinematography: 10/10 Beautifully shot: interiors, exteriors, day, or night.Sound: 9/10 Very few problems. The background music might have been more effective.Acting: 7/10 I liked Stephen Dillane, Eddie Redmayne, and Hugh Dancy. I did not care so much for Elena Anaya, Unax Ugalde, or Julianne Moore (yes, she's considered an untouchable tin god, but I think other actresses could have done as well or better here).Screenplay: 8/10 I could have used more exposition.

This is the approximately true life story of Bakelite heir Antony Baekeland starting at birth. His parents are swingers of a sort. His mother is not so much motivated by sex as by manipulating people. She enjoys humiliating her husband. Juliane Moore portrays the mother not so much as an cruel villain, but as someone very self-centred, selfish, with a low tolerance for boredom. She like to make a scene just for the entertainment value of it as for the fun of shocking the onlookers.Barney Clark plays Anthony at 12. He a weird kid, simultaneously infantile and precocious. His parents keep him isolated from other children, possibly because they fear homosexual sex play.Eddie Redmayne plays Anthony at 19. He looks completely different from Barney Clark. It was not immediately clear this new character was Anthony. He reminded me of Bill Gates with his way of speaking, deadpan and freckles. Redmayne has startling sharply angled features and very thick lips. At first I found him unsympathetic, but then warmed to him as his parents screwed him over.Dad steals his girl friend. Mom shares his boyfriend. I would think Anthony, who was an heir, would have bolted, but he did not. There is a scene when Mom seduces Antony by grinding her pelvis against his crotch until she comes then giving him a hand job. It was not so much seduction, as she decided, and he did as he was told. This is pretty raw.The movie meanders along without apparent direction other than parents behaving worse and worse, keeping Anthony socially isolated, and Anthony getting weirder and weirder. But it is a real life and real lives don't have scriptwriters.Much of the movie is not clear unless you read the closing credits which are in quite small type which tell the events that happened after the police arrived at the end.Hint: pay specially close to attention to anything to do with a dog collar or a pet dog that "died".

Tom Kalin's film is not a simple story about classical Oedipus complex. Sure, the symbolic death of the father might be found as well as a very literal carnal commerce with the mother. Savage Grace is mainly a story about a boy growing up and struggling with his existential dilemmas and dealing with that to which Jacques Lacan or Zizek would refer as "the real" in opposition to "reality". Here reality is that of a wealthy family with a life full of luxuries and eccentricities. But that's reality. The symbolic order. Beneath all that there is an excess, something that can be neither subdued nor fully explained.Lacan also said that desire would be connected with the real. And thus when desire conquers everything, the ugly truth shows up in the surface. But I won't spoil the grim finale even to those who might have heard about the real case that inspired this story.It's interesting, however, to observe that young Baekeland is in-between-places. His sexuality seems to surmount the models Lacan would include in his orthodox sexuation graphic. He has homosexual encounters at a very early age and then later on. But that does not seem to seclude him from other experiences (namely the incestuous aspect of the relationship with his mother).I would say that the ultimate failure comes from his inability to articulate his desire. And this inability will lead him to act against his own interests in a most nefarious way.

SAVAGE GRACE – CATCH IT ( B- ) The movie is based upon famous socialite Barbara Baekeland who was stabbed to death by her gay son Tony Baekeland. The premises of the movie is really promising & to be honest while watching the movie I didn't knew that it was actually based upon true story it was on the end when they started to tell what happened to Tony after killing her mother, then I came to know its based upon true story. The story is really complex, intriguing, interesting and extremely shocking, it will blow your mind like mine if you don't know what you are getting into. The two most shocking scenes for me were when the mother (Julianne Moore) and son (Eddie Remayne) are sleeping with the same guy (Huge Dency) and at one time all three of them sleep together and make out. That was like Dreadful to watch. The second sequence is a sex scene between Mother (Julianne Moore) & Son (Eddie Redmayne) (it was shocking and will leave you stunned and you will think, why the hell i didn't know what it's about). Well as the story was very complex, director got hand on good actors but sadly he couldn't convey the story convincingly though the movie's look is really artistic but its the phase and dialogues makes movie really effective and ground breaking. Julianne Moore as the rich spoiled socialite is fabulous; I think she did her best though she didn't get Award wining powerful moments in this twisted movie. Eddie Redmayne is really good, he tried his best to grape the complexities of the character at best. Huge Dency, well after this I realize that I don't like him as an Actor at all! He is just annoying to even watch now (I don't know why). I think the movie could have been better if we would have more into minds of Julianne and Edie's characters because on the surface things weren't as disturbing as what happened in the end. Maybe Julianne didn't wanted his son to be gay and tried masturbating or whatever with him but they should have shown in the beginning that Julianne didn't approved of her son being gay. Anyways the complexities of the characters were a lot more then for even the director to tell in the right way. It's always very difficult to tell a true story on cellulite. Watch it! If you have guts and brains to get trough such a shocking subject matter.