Savage Grace.

"Sizzling hot, swimming in high falutin' European locales and barely articulating thriller beats that intrigue and puzzle without doing much thrilling, I can't quite shake Tom Kalin's bizarro feature Savage Grace," writes Brandon Harris. "His first in 15 years, the long awaited follow up to his 1992 New Queer Cinema opening salvo Swoon, Savage Grace stays with you and is nothing if not unsettling (and watchable), but that doesn't mean its any good."

Writing in the Voice, Jim Ridley finds the film to be "a tawdry nighttime soap that marvels without insight at its characters' despicable behavior: It squanders a major performance by [Julianne] Moore."

Updated through 5/31.

"It's no coincidence that Savage Grace, which begins on the Upper East Side in 1946 and ends in Swinging London in 1972, announces every stop in its path with intertitles in the same typeface used by the New Yorker — that rag and this flick share a similarly gelid air of faux intellectualism and leisure-class entitlement," writes Benjamin Strong in the L Magazine.

"Howard A Rodman's script has a lot of juice, and the rhythms are so pregnant that the air vibrates with something, even if you're not sure what," writes David Edelstein in New York.

Steve Dollar talks with Kalin for the New York Sun.

Scott Tobias talks with Moore for the AV Club.

Earlier: Reviews from Cannes 07 and Sundance.

Update: "Distanced, opaque, and criminally lurid, Kalin's new film dares you to look beneath its prurient exterior: instead of a beating heart, you'll find a rotting hole," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE. "As in Swoon, these people are unknowable, here their lives an empty parade of glossy misery; nothing particularly new about that, but the defiance of the technique makes for fascinatingly disagreeable viewing."

Updates, 5/29: "Is Julianne Moore the queen of fraudulent gay cinema?" asks Armond White in the New York Press.

"Julianne Moore is some kind of great in Savage Grace, but the film? Not so much." Nick Schager in Cinematical.

Andrew O'Hehir talks with Moore for Salon.

"Savage Grace should have the force of Greek tragedy, but Kalin's chamber drama feels curiously stifling and flat, and Moore's volatile turn isn't enough to quicken its pulse," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club.

Updates, 5/30: "There is a degree of pleasure to be found in watching a slow-moving spectacle of privileged decadence," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "But your interest in the decline of the Baekelands as they wander down the path from sarcasm and social posturing to abandonment, incest and murder never rises above the level of prurience.... Bisexuality! Marijuana! Anal sex! A father who sleeps with his son's girlfriend! A son who sleeps with his mother's boyfriend! All of great intrinsic interest, to be sure, but Savage Grace doesn't seem quite sure of how to communicate its own fascination with such doings, whether to convey shock, envy, pity or bemusement."

"Were it not based in fact, the film could be derided as sensationalist pulp," writes Meghan Keane in the New York Sun. "As it stands, scenes degrading the film's star (including one particularly scarring sex scene) border on the abusive. But despite, or perhaps on account of, the indignities of her character, Ms Moore takes off running with the role."

Updates, 5/31: Peter Knegt profiles Kalin at indieWIRE.

"Eddie Redmayne, primarily known for his work on the British stage, plays Moore's sexually conflicted son Tony; he proves himself to be equally pale, wan and extraordinarily good looking as his famous on-screen mother - no small feat," writes Marcy Dermansky. "While both actors are a sumptuous treat to look at, as are many of the European locations, Savage Grace seems valuable more for its camp value than for its emotional truths."

Posted by dwhudson at May 28, 2008 1:28 PM