No insight in 'Savage Grace'

Tom Kalin's "Savage Grace" boasts top-shelf performances, well-crafted camera work, a literate script and a fact-based story that includes betrayal, adultery, three-way sex, incest, homosexuality and murder.

With all this, you'd think Kalin's movie would be a scintillating journey to the dark side of human relationships, a trip to Tabooville.

Instead, "Savage Grace" is little more than an empty dramatic shell, a story so emotionlessly rendered and clinically reported that it makes a documentary episode of "Snapped!" on the Oxygen Channel seem like a remake of "Body Heat."

Based on the book by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson, "Savage Grace" stars Julianne Moore as Barbara Daly, an actress who marries Brooks Baekeland (Stephen Dillane), heir to the Baekeland plastics fortune. The story is oddly and unevenly narrated by their son, Tony (Eddie Redmayne), who one day stabs Barbara to death in the kitchen, then orders Chinese food delivered while waiting for the police.

"Savage Grace" intends to be an examination of how Tony came to this spot in his terrible, pampered life. But Kalin's movie has no insights, doesn't ask questions and never judges his characters. In short, his movie is like an elementary school book report - a regurgitation of facts without context or values. Would the Baekelands be different if they'd been in a faith-based community? If they had real friends? If they hadn't been so wealthy? Despite very brave performances by Moore and Redmayne, "Savage Grace" has one thing in common with the Baekeland fortune: both are plastic.

"Savage Grace" opens today at the Century Centre in Chicago. No MPAA rating (sexual situations, language, drug use, nudity and violence) 97 minutes.