I will not describe what happens at the end, except to say nothing has really prepared us for it. She also had a nasty habit of saying rude things to break up social events, and you can hardly blame Brooks for leaving - although he, too, was so lacking in ordinary human qualities.ĭecadence, of course, is the word to describe this world, but nothing really prepares us for its final descent. She was all clothes and hair and endless cigarettes, and conversation that was never really adequate for the level she was aiming for. The tone of the film is set by Julianne Moore, in what I suppose must be described as a fine performance, although she has little enough to work with. Sam, an art dealer, is also in the mix, and indeed mother, son and walker all end up in bed together. Tony was of indeterminate sexuality from the beginning and now tilts over into homosexuality, with such friends as Jake (Unax Ugalde), a pot-smoking beach creature.
He left with Blanca ( Elena Anaya), the Spanish beauty Tony brought home from the beach one day, only to watch his father seduce her from right under his nose.
They are known everywhere, loved nowhere, except for a few hangers-on like Sam ( Hugh Dancy), a gay "walker" who accompanies Barbara after Brooks has left. Oh, but they all look so elegant! They know how to dress and how to behave (and misbehave) in the high-society watering holes of New York (1950s), Paris (1960s), Majorca and London (into the 1970s). Their son, Tony ( Eddie Redmayne), who narrates much of the story, is raised as her coddled darling, but feels little real love from either parent and grows into a narcissistic, hedonistic, inverted basket case. By the third generation, the fortune has produced Brooks, a vapid clotheshorse who nevertheless perhaps deserves better than a wife who is all pose and attitude, all brittle facade, deeply rotten inside.
Brooks' grandfather invented Bakelite, used in everything from cooking utensils to nuclear bombs. The movie tells the true story of the marriage of Barbara Daly ( Julianne Moore) and Brooks Baekeland ( Stephen Dillane), who glittered erratically in the social circles of the 1940s through the 1960s.
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