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Todd Haynes, director of Poison and the Karen Carpenter Barbie-dull film Superstar, extends his reputation as America's Foremost radical filmmaker wirh the menacingly soothing Safe Julianne Moore plays a well-off San Fernando home-maker increasingly engulfed by an allergy diagnosed as multiple chemical sensitivity. The film elides her initial cocooned well-being and hei debilitation and immersion In Now Age therapy into a single unshakeable vision of chaos under sedation. |
"Julianne Moore's-so brilliant In Vanya on 42nd Street (MIFF 1995)-beautifully rtuanced performance details the creeping interior malaise of Carol's routine life of household chores and aerobic classes which is gradually disrupted as she develops an allergic response to everything around her.
"Subject to a series of medical investigations that cannot divine the source of her problem, she finds respite at a scarily evangelistic New Age health centre. It is a tantalisingly complex and at times, disorientating film. In which every succinctly composed frame provides new meaning as Haynes interrogates what the 'safe' might be in Carol's life—and. beyond that, in American culture" • Lizzie Francke. Ljmdon Film Festlml
"While researching environmental illness and AIDS I was struck by how many sufferers, thrust out of their normal lives, were drawn to the logic of New Age therapies Somehow the solace of being held responsible for one's condition outweighed the chaos of an incurable lurure. Carol's search for identity and the safety of belonging lead her to the same conclusion she nooses culpability over chaos. It is possible the illness that so disrupts the order of her world is far less dangerous than the cure to restore it?".
Todd Haynes