A shocking and lurid tale told in a remarkably subtle way, Savage Grace is the story of a languid, filthy rich and, of course dysfunctional family. It is a moody film about moody people but is always unpredictable in its plotting.

Julianne Moore is the obsessive, chillingly self-absorbed wife of the heir to the Bakelite fortune, played insouciantly by Stephen Dillane. The film is narrated by their son, a boy of uncertain sexuality (Eddie Redmayne) who becomes part of a very odd ménage à trois with his mother and her "walker" after his father seduces his first real girlfriend.

The plot could be pure twisted soap opera, were it not based closely on a true story whose tragic ending took place in London in 1972. Before London, the action takes place largely in Paris and Mallorca, so there's lots of sun on the screen, but this is an unremittingly chilly, perverse and sad film from director Tom Kalin, whose best-known film was Swoon, about another upper class scandal, the Loeb-Leopold murders.