Richard E Grant leads Savage House through SXSW London screening
richard e grant brings Sir Chauncey to Savage House, which screened at SXSW London before its 5 June release in the UK and US. Claire Foy plays Lady Savage in Peter Glanz’s raucous 18th-century satire, a movie built on status anxiety, debt and the kind of social panic that keeps a dinner invitation feeling like a threat.
SXSW London for Savage House
At SXSW London, Savage House arrived as a period yarn about a grimy, status-obsessed couple trying to keep up appearances in a vast crumbling country estate. Grant and Foy carry the film as Sir Chauncey and Lady Savage, with Richard McCabe and Vicki Pepperdine as two ghastly neighbours who add to the pressure around the house.
Glanz wrote and directed the film, and he keeps the plot moving with a social setup that is simple to track and expensive to survive. The Savages are thrilled when the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire invite themselves for dinner, then borrow ruinously to make the house worthy of the visit. That is the whole machine: one invitation, one bill, and a household pushed toward calamity.
Richard E Grant as Sir Chauncey
Grant’s Sir Chauncey gives the film its sharpest engine. He is a parvenu, an adventurer and a man who loathes Jacobites, while Lady Savage is carrying on with the footman Halifax and he is carrying on with the maid Dorothy. That double infidelity turns the estate into a place where class performance and private behavior are in open conflict.
The setup also explains why this screening matters now. Savage House is not being positioned as a long rollout title; it has a dated release and a festival stop that puts it in front of an audience before it lands on 5 June in both the UK and US. For viewers, that means the film is already in circulation as a finished piece rather than a title waiting for a future launch decision.
Peter Glanz’s 18th-century satire
Glanz’s film leans into candlelit interiors and periodic orchestral stabs, but the real pressure comes from spending and status anxiety. The 18th-century setting is not decorative; it gives the satire a rigid social ladder, which is exactly why the Savages can be ruined by one dinner they cannot afford to host.
That makes Savage House a straightforward bet for audiences who want a period comedy with a cleaner target than prestige costume drama usually offers. If the film’s SXSW London screening is the test run, 5 June is the handoff: viewers in the UK and US will be able to see whether Grant, Foy and Glanz can turn debt, vanity and infidelity into a lasting crowd response.
