Savage Grace.

Savage Grace (2007) directed by Tom Kalin, shown on BBC 2. In many ways this was more compelling viewing than ‘Appropriate Adult’. Perhaps that had to do with expectation. I read the blurb about a mother trying to save her son from homosexuality. At once my mind jumped ahead and thought of some kind of religious angle: beatings, prayers, the kid getting locked up and berated for having such ungodly feelings and failings (c.f. Jeanette Winterton’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit). Wrong.

Julian Moore, who I believe was, or still is, in Desperate Housewives plays socialite Barbara Baekeland, who in the first scene leaves her baby at home and goes with her husband, war hero, Brooks Baekeland to the Stork Club. He returns home alone. She flags down a car and goes partying with some younger men.

Fast forward 40 years later and she looks exactly the same, but with a different hat. Her son Antony is dependent on her and she on him. No housewife, however, desperate, however, would shag her son to cure him of homosexuality. That was a surprise. Antony stabbing his mum and killing her, a lesser one. Perhaps, I’ve been watching too much Fred West.

Savage Grace based on the book, of the same name, by Natalie Robinson and Steven M L Aronso makes the book look like an interesting read.