SAVAGE GRACE

CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF GROTESQUE SEXUAL WRONGNESS

There are things I don't like in movies. Defecation, sexual violence, animal cruelty, Mark Wahlberg. There are specific things I have to look away from: with me it's spiders. But in general there's not much that's going to have me yelling "Stop that! Stop it now!" at the screen. It did this time. (This was at home so no cinema audiences were annoyed in the viewing of this film.)

Savage Grace tells the true and tragic story of the heir (Eddie Redmayne) to the Bakelite plastics empire up to the murder of his mother (played by Julianne Moore) in 1972. He's very (as in too) close to his mother and once his father (Stephen Dillane) has walked away with a Spanish floozie half his age, there's really only one way this can go. Now I don't really know the ins and outs of the historical truth, but on the evidence of this movie the relationship between son and mother is not just bordering on Creepy but launching fullscale incursions into Wrong.

I could barely stomach the scene with mother and son in bed together with their mutual bisexual lover between them but I really wasn't prepared for the whole Oedipal thing in the last act where they Go The Whole Hog. Discreetly filmed from behind the sofa it may be, and fully clothed it may be, but she's your mum! Urghhh. Urghhhh. Please. Stop that now.

It probably doesn't help that Savage Grace is cold and leisurely, and you don't care about any of the characters - even though they were real people. But it's the incest that really turned me away from it.

**

Still, if you're in the mood: