Cannes. Savage Grace.

Eugene Hernandez has caught the Directors' Fortnight entry, Savage Grace, "the long-awaited second feature from Swoon director Tom Kalin. The words I keep thinking of to describe [Julianne] Moore's remarkable performance in the film are, 'deliciously evil.'"

"Cineastes may see parallels in Orson Welles's adaptation of The Magnificent Ambersons or Visconti's version of The Leopard," suggests Allan Hunter in Screen Daily. "Savage Grace doesn't have that level of ambition but it is dark, uneasy little tale with notable performances from Eddie Redmayne as the sulky, deeply damaged Tony; and Moore, who has her best role in years as a desperate woman whose notions of love became corrupted by her bitter disappointments with life."

Someone at Variety finds it "a crushingly unsuccessful glimpse into the lives of the rich, peripatetic heirs of the Bakelite plastics fortune.... In the book Savage Grace (like its predecessor Edie, published three years earlier), the narrative wasn't told so much as constructed, edited into being through first-person narratives that revealed the complexities of its characters. Kalin, so sure in Swoon, overreaches in trying to tell too much of the story, shuttling between New York, Paris, Spain and London, but in trying to build his characters he rarely gets beyond the superficial."

"You have to wonder what we're supposed to take away from a sicko psychodrama that's well acted (Moore gives it her best shot), but offers zero insight into what made these folks derail," frowns Erica Abeel at Filmmaker. "Rather than engaging the viewer, the film virtually fades from the screen as you watch, becoming a phantom of the filmmaker's imagination."

Update, 5/20: "It's one warped sexy decadent sophisticated movie." And Anne Thompson notes it got a standing ovation, too.

Updates, 5/22: "The best aspect that Savage Grace has on its side is Moore's performance; careening from despondent midlife whiner to cunning seductress, her creepy demeanor recalls Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes's Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," writes Eric Kohn for indieWIRE. "However, discussions that will inevitably encircle the movie whenever it hits theaters are sure to center on a particularly nasty incest scene."

Rob Nelson talks with Kalin for the Voice and adds, "Halfway through the fest, it's the most provocative American film in Cannes - Sicko withstanding."

Updates, 5/23: For the New York Times, Manohla Dargis talks with screenwriter Howard Rodman: MP3.

A "film filled with unlikeable people doing bad things to each other can be hard to watch," notes Hannah Eaves for PopMatters. "Overarch, detached and fragmented, it is difficult to make any emotional connection to this story."

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Cannes @ 60. Index.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 19, 2007 3:31 PM