The woman holds out the ghastly wrist wounds of a failed suicide and the young man gently disinfects and bandages them -- just another tender mother and son moment in Savage Grace.

Savage Grace is a fictionalized account of various true and lurid events in the lives of three members of the spectacularly dysfunctional Baekeland family: Barbara, Brooks and Tony. Barbara Daly was a shop girl and aspiring actress when she married Brooks Baekeland, heir to the Bakelite plastic fortune. The birth of their son, Tony, completed their little triangle of boredom, co-dependancy, social climbing, violence and perverse sexual practice.

What jolly fun!

Julianne Moore stars in Savage Grace as the truly terrifying Barbara Baekeland; her performance alone is worth the price of admission. Mrs. Baekeland was very beautiful and, apparently, disturbed.

She was mad, bad and dangerous to know -- a grasping society wannabe, sexually voracious and prone to risky behaviour. The movie covers 25 years in the lives of the Baekelands, and Moore's performance is a delicate balancing act, a study in the minute changes that took Barbara from her "bit of a handful" youth to her monstrous middle age.

Money and beauty prompt people to overlook a lot.

Brooks (Stephen Dillane) is depicted as a man who cannot get beyond his own family myth. Dillane is superb as the weak, bullying Brooks, a man who writes novels that never quite get published.

He talks endlessly about his famous grandfather and the family fortune, and there's something just slightly "off" about him. He is damaged.

According to Savage Grace, the son, Tony, was raised by his mother as a sort of extension of her own ambitions. The three Baekelands drift around the world together -- New York, Paris, Cadaques, Mallorca, London -- but they don't have much to do except lunch.

Tony is gay, and starts bringing boys home at the age of about 14 or 15. This does not sit well with either mommy or daddy.

By the 1960s, Tony (Eddie Redmayne) is a beautiful young wastrel involved in the general sex/drugs/rock 'n' roll of the day.

He seems to be attracted to both men and women, but the only girl he brings home ends up with dad. By the time he and mom are having an affair with the same escort (Hugh Dancy), things begin to unravel for the Baekeland bunch.

Savage Grace is all shiny surfaces and glossy pictures, just the thing to underline the rot within.

Tony Baekeland narrates parts of the film, and the story sometimes develops in an odd and disquieting way that seems to mimic his thinking.

The subject matter could be considered shocking and the film is difficult to watch at times; the director, Tom Kalin, isn't pulling his punches, but he refrains from giving any of the material the showy Hollywood treatment.

Tony's slow slide into madness, for example, is just as quiet and sad as such things can be in real life. Savage Grace is the modern version of a Greek tragedy, and the camera never flinches or looks away.

Viewers may find themselves doing both.

(This film is rated 18-A)

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