Am I the only person in the world who has hated everything Julianne Moore has ever done? I never, ever believe this actress, even for a second. She is always too in control, even when she is supposedly losing it. In this film, the first twenty or thirty minutes are excruciating. They are meant to show us the high-living sophisticated world of the super-rich and well-connected... in this section of the movie Moore comes across as cold, phony and irritatingly boring. There is no real class to any of it... no wit either, although everyone seems to be trying so hard. Is it the director's fault, or the scriptwriters, that everyone in this movie comes across as inhumanely cold? Even when he is stabbing his mother to death, the main focus of the story, the son, never seems to be really feeling anything that could make him speak in more than a calm, cool voice. Dysfunction is one thing, total anomie is another.Except once when he can't find a dead dog's collar, and he totally loses it. This is supposed to be the emotional highlight of the film...in truth, it just comes across as overworked. The entire film takes place in a series of set pieces, but none of them seems to be advancing our understanding of the family or the people we are watching - we remain as detached as they seem to be. No - I exaggerate... I actually thought I saw a glimmer of true conspiratorial glee between the son and his first lover... even a bit of passion. If the film had taken twenty minutes to explore their relationship a bit more, it could even have become interesting. Alas, it was the only part of the movie that seemed to have any real connection between the actors... and it lasted all of two minutes. Personally, I felt that this film needed an entirely reworked script in order for it to gel. And a Director who knows how to get in close and show us the grimness of things. There are two scenes where this could have perhaps worked..first when the mother tries to commit suicide, and later when the son kills her. But in both instances the visuals are entirely stylized. The mother is supposed to have almost bled to death...completely unbelievable when you see how little blood is on the bed-sheet. And just a close up of the blade being shoved into flesh when the son stabs his mother could have brought the scene to life. Unfortunately, the Director chose aesthetics over emotion. I kept waiting for the film to take off, for it to make us care, even slightly, about the people whose lives we were watching. But even the incest scene was stylized and passionless. This film, in short, has almost no reason to exist.
Review of Savage Grace
