Five years before Julianne Moore played a 1950's Connecticut housewife in crisis in Todd Haynes 'Far From Heaven', she played a 1980's California housewife in crises in Todd Haynes 'Safe'. A trophy wife, beautiful, but a woman of seemingly little personality and no great passions. She's a nice, pleasant lady, not dumb but not particularly smart. She lives something of an auto pilot life, errands, aerobics, decorating the mini mansion where she lives with her husband (Xandier Berkley) and 10 year old step son.
It begins slowly but Carol starts having reactions to things, hair sprays, cosmetics, exhausts, bug sprays. The doctors can't find anything physically wrong with her, there is skepticism from family and friends, but she starts having incidents of shortness of breath, then a seizure in a public place, there's a hospital stay but they can't figure out what's wrong. Carol encounters a bulletin at her health club about "environmental illness". She goes to the meeting, is sold that this is what she has and sets about looking for treatment. She finds a treatment center in New Mexico, perhaps it holds the answers and perhaps it does not. I hesitate to say more.
'Safe' is the kind of movie that asks for a half hour post film discussion to unpack it. There's a lot here, but it's presented with a kind of striking blandness, both surreal and hyper real. There is a commitment to ambiguity here that I really admire. 'Safe' dosen't play it safe, and is unsettling because of this. Existential horror in dramatic disguise. ***1/2
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