This year Julianne Moore and British actor Eddie Redmayne are up for Oscars – Julianne for her role in Still Alice and Eddie for The Theory of Everything. However, six years ago they were co-starring as an incestuous mother and son in Tom Kalin’s Savage Grace.
Oo-er!
The film tells the based-on-reality story of the Barbara Baekeland (Moore)- the wife of Brooks Baekeland, heir of the Bakelite plastics fortune. (His grandfather invented the plastic.) Redmayne plays Barbara’s son Antony, who eventually kills his mother – but not before engaging in a threesome with her and another man played by Hugh Dancy.
Although Moore was praised for her performance in the film, “Savage Grace” itself wasn’t a hit with critics: It currently has a 38 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and EW gave it a B-.
As Owen Gleiberman said in his review, “Savage Grace has been shot with decadent cool creaminess, yet it’s a rather slipshod movie.”
For Redmayne, it was simply a job: It was only his third theatrical film. He followed it with a role in The Other Boleyn Girl and the miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, and won a Tony in 2010.
Both stars have since put the film behind them. But for all the artistic success of their recent material, it’s hard not to wish that performers were able to keep a bit of that riskiness in awards season. At least on DVD, we’ll always have the pair decompensating across Europe, glamorously.
So I’m sorry Eddie mate, hate to break to you, but I won’t be watching this one (I think), but good luck on Sunday, as we Brits in LA are rooting for you to win!
