Running time: 97 minutes
Starring: Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane, Eddie Redmayne
Rating 5 out of 10
Barbara Daly was a former model and Hollywood starlet who married into the Baekeland family - whose enormous wealth was based upon their Bakelite empire - and whose shocking death in 1972 caused a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. In a rare case of matricide, it was her son who stabbed her to death in their London apartment.Tom Kalin's film examines the events leading up to her murder, and it would be hard to imagine a more dysfunctional family set-up. Barbara (Julianne Moore) was very close to her son - so close, according to the film, that they became lovers when he reached adulthood.
This was enough to send the young man (Eddie Redmayne) over the edge as he was already suffering from confusion over his own sexuality and his father (Stephen Dillane) had stolen his girlfriend from him and fled the family.
Kalin made a minor splash as a director in the early 90s with his arthouse film Swoon which looked at the at the high society kidnapping case involving Loeb and Leopold in the 1920s. Now he returns to a similar rarefied stratum of society with a strong emphasis on the seedier side of things.
Like Kalin, Moore is never one to shy away from difficult roles, but while she is effective in the lead - as are Dillane and Redmayne - she is portraying such an unlikeable and confused character that it's impossible to identify or sympathise with much that is occurring on the screen. As a result, it will be difficult for the film to win over many ardent fans.
Paul Hurley
