Little White Lies magazine

Gay cinema in the US suffers from something of an identity crisis, a symptom no doubt of the fact that Hollywood still hasn’t really come out of the closet. The big studios still tend to portray gays as loveable, non-sexual sidekicks, and the number of directors working specifically in the genre can be counted on one hand. Thank goodness, then, for the return of Tom Kalin, who came to prominence in 1991 with gay cinema classic, Swoon. After years as a producer, Kalin has returned to the director’s chair. What a shame the film isn’t better.

Set across the 1950s and ’60s, Savage Grace tells the true story of vacuous socialite Barbara Baekeland (Julianne Moore), the increasingly unmaternal affection she gives her spoiled son Tony (Eddie Redmayne), and the dark chain of events it sets off. Kalin’s intention seems to be to make a camp tragedy – an Oedipal take on The Talented Mr Ripley as directed by Douglas Sirk – but the finished product is too rambling and hysterical to be a success.

The film spends too long documenting the pair’s triangular relationship with a family friend (played with a Dirk Bogarde-esque queenliness by Hugh Dancy), and not enough exploring Tony and Barbara’s mental fragilities. In particular, Tony’s insanity is played almost as an afterthought and relayed via that old screenwriting cheat, extracts from a journal read out as voice-over. The film isn’t helped here by Redmayne’s simpering, moon-faced performance, making Tony appear afflicted more by teenage angst than mental despair. Moore copes bravely with a remarkably undignified part, but isn’t up to her usual high standard.

It’s not a comfortable watch – Kalin’s camera has an almost erotic fixation with its characters’ faces, and the variety of extreme close-ups of wetted lips and freckled skin can turn the stomach. This is true too of Tony and Barbara’s final, incestuous scene together, an excruciatingly misjudged piece of melodrama that could seal the film’s fate as a cult classic, but little else.