Savage Grace

I had to watch Savage Grace, an amazing tale of dysfunction and murder, several times before I figured out why it had missed the mark. The cinematography is fantastic, the acting, particularly by Stephen Dillane and Julianne Moore, is first-rate. (Ms. Moore is said to have given the performance of her career: indeed, it is hard to imagine how she was able to pull off the hystrionics in several scenes with such accuracy and without descending into charicature.) The plot is fantastic: the story of a wealthy American family that ends in murder.

Finally, after several viewings (all of them a strain, as the film's subject matter is difficult to watch), I was able to conclude that this film lacks rounding out. I wanted to know more about many of the particular, needed more examples of how the family interacted, and so on. Instead, I was treated to beautiful, but useless, sequences of a horse's eye, scenery, and such.

Savage Grace left me wanting more....