Have any of you seen the recent movie which swept and shocked the film festivals: SAVAGE GRACE, starring Julianne Moore as the American socialite Barbara Baekeland, her son Tony and her marriage to Brooks Baekeland, the heir to the BAKELITE fortune?

It's a fascinating, juicy picture based on a true, decadent story, and parts of it will burn your brain, guaranteed.

Barbara Baekeland

Vintage Art Deco necklace made of Bakelite, the first plastic.

I have been intentionally avoiding this movie. I can't. I just can't.

Why?

Just curious...

I read the article in the Daily Mail, I think. There may be a link in POL.

Rasputin, my question about this movie is: Is there anything about the story of Bakelite in it? If so, I would be interested in seeing it; if not, well, I still might if there are references to Baekeland and the company. By the way, Bakelite was not the first plastic but it was the first synthesized plastic. Prior plastics had been made from natural materials.

Here's a very interesting bio of Baekeland and the history of Bakelite. In the middle of the article it talks also of the earlier plastics:

http://www.plasticsnews.com/century/bakelite.html

If they make a movie about this, I'll be first on line to see it!

P.S. I woldn't mind having that necklace!

No. Surprisingly not. All they specify is that Brooks Baekeland is the son of Leo H. Baekeland who invented Bakelite... He was on the cover of TIME back in the 1920's.



The movie begins in the 1940's, and we perceive that Brooks Baekeland, despite his erudite, industrious father, is a clotheshorse, a lout, a playboy and a layabout.

I also love Bakelite! Especially Art Deco formations of it.

I remember the article - a sick story.

No, haven't seen it, but I read a book once about her son Tony -- truly creepy and awful. Maybe it's the same story?

Nope. Why would I want to put something like that in my brain?

Thanks for the reccomendation, Rasputin. This is actually one of the free "on-demand" films available from my cable company, so I'll watch it when I have the chance. There's so little I want to see in the theaters these days besides the new Jonathan Demme, the new Mike Leigh and the new French Christmas movie with Arnaud Desplechin.

Nubka, This is the true story of a pathologically demented woman and the horrors she inflicts upon her only son (as well as all who are in in her sick and twisted path). No one in this story gets out whole or anywhere near it.