Famous film villain Norman Bates said, “A boy's best friend is his mother.” Hitchcock’s Psycho showed us how tragically that relationship turned out for both Norman and Mrs. Bates. Savage Grace depicts another such relationship ending in tragedy -- but in real life. On November 17, 1972, beautiful socialite Barbara Daly Baekeland was brutally knifed to death by her son Antony Baekeland, the great-grandson and heir of Dr. Leo Baekeland, inventor of Bakelite plastics. Filmmaker Tom Kalin, who previously directed and wrote the screenplay for Swoon, is obviously fascinated with true crime stories, particularly those involving the rich, famous, and useless.

In Swoon, Kalin focused his attentions on the twisted relationship between Leopold, Jr. and Loeb, whose 1920s New York thrill killing of a young boy was considered the crime of the century at that time. In his new film, Savage Grace, Kalin points his lens toward the Baekeland family -- husband Brooks (the always dapper Stephen Dillane), wife Barbara (Julianne Moore) and son Antony (Eddie Redmayne) -- to dramatize what led up to a shocking murder. Based on the book  by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson, the story unfolds in six “acts”, corresponding to events that take place in 1946, 1957, 1967, 1968, 1969, and finally 1972.

The young Barbara Daly, an ambitious, social-climbing model with hopes of becoming an actress, manages to snare the highly eligible Brooks Baekeland, and yet try as she might to fit seamlessly into his world of wealth, class, and privilege, she sticks out like a sore thumb -- he’s “royalty” of a sort, she’s just a pretender to the throne. Brooks is considered an intellectual, and yet with all his brains and literary pretensions, he remains first and foremost a dilettante, who rests on the past glory, hard work, and fortunes of his grandfather Leo. Barbara has artistic pretensions -- she likes to paint. But like Brooks, her talents remain just that -- pretensions. The lives of Brooks and Barbara are one long whirl of cocktail parties, mingling with café society, globetrotting, etc. And into this pleasure-seeking, chaotic, and ultimately aimless existence they bring a baby boy, Antony (as a child, Barney Clark).  Poor kid.

As the years go by, the Baekelands globetrot over Europe. Cracks in the marriage become fissures. Confused and lonely Antony (now a young man played by Eddie Redmayne) whose sexual preferences are now clear, drifts on the periphery of his parents lives and consorts with some undesirable locals, such as Black Jake (Unax Ugalde). Although mother and son have always had an intense bond, the brittle and unstable Barbara clings even harder to Antony now as she watches Brooks slip away.

Eventually Brooks dumps Barbara for Antony’s only girlfriend and abandons Antony altogether.  Much of the details of this dysfunctional family, and even more dysfunctional relationship between mother and son, don’t find their way from the book into the movie. Kalin takes an almost chilly and remote stance in his approach to filming the Baekeland’s story. What he does depict in the film prior to the 1972 scenes, some subtle, some not so subtle, hint at disturbing mother/son dynamics, which become all to clear by the end. What should ideally be a relationship of mutual interdependence devolves into a psycho-physio symbiotic nightmare. While we the audience might feel shock at the characters’ behaviors, we don’t experience it as the visceral punch to the gut we should, mainly because Kalin has distanced us from the characters.

All three lead actors deliver strong, almost-too-believable performances, particularly Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne.  Moore has a talent for capturing the qualities of brittleness, bitterness, instability, and vulnerability -- not an easy feat. I wanted to comfort her and then strangle her. Redmayne, though playing a character who commits a heinous crime, manages to evoke our sympathy for Antony, as we watch him slip away from reality and see the light in his eyes grow dimmer.

With Savage Grace, Kalin delivers a powerful and disturbing film. It reminds us the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the economic hill. However, including additional background details from the book might have given the story more power and punch. Either way, though, one thing is abundantly clear -- mother love may be a beautiful thing, but smother love can’t be healthy for anyone.

(Released by IFC Films; not rated by MPAA.)