Oedipus was a well-adjusted, mild-mannered son compared to Bakelite heir Tony Baekaland, a snobbish fop who slid a kitchen knife into his mum after a row about a missing dog lead.
But you can’t really blame Tone...after all his doting mom had just finished squatting on top of him only to finish the job by hand. And you thought most mums just helped out their sons with their maths homework. And she did hide the lead.
Yes, we’re in the land of the idle rich, a morally bruising neverland where namby-pamby notions such as fidelity, modesty and simple humility are roughly elbowed out and 24/7 duplicity among shag-happy lotus eaters is the norm.
Barbara Baekeland (Moore) is the queen bee with a foul-mouthed sting. She’s snared Bakelite heir Brooks (Dillane), a gimlet-eyed snob crippled by insecurities. However, for her the man of the house is her only son Tony (Redmayne).
His immature presence disturbs the fragile equilibrium of their marriage and he is increasingly drawn to his outwardly brittle, inwardly vulnerable mother while his cold fish father views him as a failure, even stooping so low as to pinch his sultry Spanish girlfriend. Thanks dad.
As this bitching trio of super-annuated narcissists flits from New York to Paris to Cadaques to Mallorca, you envy them the air miles...but not a lot more.
Moore is ill-served by an often hysterical script that seems to entertain the notion that she can "cure" her son’s homosexuality by doing a bit more than you’d strictly expect from a dutiful mother.
Hugh Dancy drifts into the fractured love triangle as a sort of camp fixer who beds both mum and son while Tone’s camp obsession with the lead of his beloved dead dog is the sort of plot device that might have been suggested by Julian Clary.
Unsympathetic and intense, a catalogue of tawdry, nasty incidents give it the flavour of an X-rated soap without offering any insight into the venal inner workings of the alienatingly louche participants. They look stunning while acting appallingly.
Ultimately, there’s no saving graces here.
Tim Evans
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