Julianne Moore’s ‘Savage Grace’
Nick Haramis
April 28, 2008
Much to my family's chagrin, I've always been sort of obsessed with incest. I read JT Leroy's The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things with great excitement! What an exciting coming-of-age odyssey! I watched Spanking the Monkey and The House of Yes, reveling in family ties bound too tightly. I even flipped through the Dollanganger melodramas churned out by V.C. Andrews, surreptitiously of course, because twincest was of a different breed altogether. When, in university, I was forced to decide on a topic for my undergraduate thesis, my choice was obvious. Over the course of many months, I examined the ways in which incest was used in popular culture to explore notions of sameness and difference. Sylvia Plath and Jacques Lacan held it all together. It was also interesting that mom-on-son action and its variants often came about as reactions to a fear of difference in the outside world: homosexuality, miscegenation. Aspirations of academia aside, people were really creeped out. Still, I persevered with my research—until Julianne Moore came along and ruined everything.
In Tom Kalin’s new film, Savage Grace, the incomparable Moore stars as socialite Barbara Daly Baekland, a woman whose life comes undone in a series of sexual missteps. Eddie Redmayne, who plays her son (and sex partner) is a revelation. Moore injects the film with desperation, and an impossible to watch (but even more impossible to not watch) combination of pride and pathos. Anyway, the movie premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival over the weekend, and now I’m no longer able to discuss and research incest objectively. Somehow, while watching this jarring and complex film, I found myself unable to stomach the subject any longer. So thanks, Julianne. Thanks a bunch.
Be the first to chime in, leave a reply below or Login to save it to your profile.