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"Safe" sensitive to satire, reality
by Barry Walters
from San Francisco Examiner
July 28, 1995

Film about ailing housewife carefully changes along with its character

"SAFE" IS one of those rare films that shakes you up not only while it's playing, but for weeks to come. The latest movie by Todd Haynes, creator of the notoriously brilliant "Superstar - The Karen Carpenter Story" (staring several heavily altered Barbie and Ken dolls) as well as the award-winning NEA-funded first feature "Poison," isn't what most people would call a horror film. There are no conventional monsters, no out-of-your-seat moments. Instead, Haynes creates a story that illustrates the inevitability of disease that is genuinely disturbing precisely because the film is so logical, so cool, so real.

"Safe" deals with a very real problem - Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, a condition that weakens the immune system and causes the sufferer to become violently ill in the presence of common substances that are unavoidable in everyday life - fragrances, car exhaust, household products, hair care products, pest sprays and more. Not much is known about the disease and many doctors dismiss it, but MCS drastically affects the lives of more Americans each year without a cure in sight.

If that description reminds you of AIDS, it should. "Safe" is the latest - and perhaps the best - film that deals with the AIDS crisis solely through analogy. Although writer / director Haynes is gay, you'd have to apply an extremely broad definition of the phrase "gay sensibility" in order to see it in "Safe." Yet only someone with an outsider perspective could have created a film that makes ordinary life this frightening.

"SAFE" FOCUSES every scene on the plight of Carol White (Julianne Moore), a pampered upper-middle-class San Fernando Valley housewife. She is beautiful and wholesome, a real-life grown-up Barbie doll and self-confessed "milkaholic," whose worst problem at the beginning of the film is that the delivery men left the wrong color sofa in her dream house. She has banal conversations, refrains from showing emotion and, to her friends' envy, doesn't even sweat during her aerobics class.

Gradually things start to go wrong, although we don't know why. She has unexplained daily headaches. She coughs uncontrollably while stuck in traffic. She gets a perm to make herself more sexy, but doesn't want to have sex. When husband Greg (Xander Berkeley) takes her out to meet a new client, she doesn't laugh as expected at the client's naughty joke. Her doctor repeatedly tells her nothing significant is wrong with her physically and advises her to see a therapist, who isn't much help either.

Because White is so emotionally withholding, she seems to be having a nervous breakdown. Perhaps she is. Her sweet, blank face now flashes with fear, and her limited sense of self is undermined.

Intrigued by a flyer posted at her gym, White attends a talk about "20th Century Disease." Suddenly, all her ailments begin to make sense - if only to her. Everyone else reacts with a mixture of skepticism and condescension, as if White has been duped and the problem is all in her mind.

It's the classic horror scenario: Only the victim understands the truth, a knowledge that results in further isolation. But White goes through a second transformation. Despite her fear, she slowly begins to assert her true self. She talks about her predicament with an excitement and certainty that her secure past couldn't inspire. As her body falls apart, her soul awakens.

MEANWHILE, the film itself undergoes a gradual metamorphosis. "Safe" begins as a subtle satire. Although every coffee table and breakfast nook in White's world is thoroughly realistic (Haynes shot the interiors of the White family's house in his uncle's and grandparents' homes), the juxtaposition of Haynes' understated cinematic style and the characters' slightly exaggerated, highly archetypal behavior results in sly comedy.

At first, there is little to like about White, and the distance we have from her antiseptic world allows us to laugh at it. When her husband applies to his head and armpits massive streams of aerosol hair spray and antiperspirant (the film is set in 1987 before ozone-friendly pump bottles became the norm), it's goofy, funny. Seconds later, when Carol escapes from his arms to vomit, our sympathies are with her and slowly grow.

As White's awareness of her illness deepens and her discovery of a new way of life progresses, Haynes' reliance on laughs diminishes and his camera becomes kinder. Because White displays more genuine emotion as her condition deteriorates, our identification with her strengthens. Although her attention is focused on external toxins, White embarks on an internal journey to purify her spirit.

After attending a couple of seminars, White leaves her family and friends to live in Wrenwood, a New Age-y rest place in rural New Mexico for sufferers of chemical sensitivity. Like her cozy suburban neighborhood, Wrenwood is both comforting and foreboding. A hysterical woman greets White, screaming wildly that her taxi is contaminating the entire place. Men and women are forced to dine separately and the caretakers are almost too cheery. The question arises: Is White setting herself up to become another kind of victim?

The answer isn't so clear. Despite her new healthy lifestyle, White's physical condition doesn't seem to improve. During one particularly heartbreaking scene, the Wrenwood patients are encouraged to see their illness as their own responsibility as the rumble of an overhead airplane dominates the soundtrack. Clearly, there is no place where White or anyone like her can be entirely "safe."

As White, Julianne Moore contributes an extraordinary performance, the kind that deserves an Oscar but won't get it because the film refuses to deliver a Hollywood ending that ties up all loose ends in a comforting knot. Throughout White's collapse, Moore is restrained, fragile, yet intense. Panic comes across in little gestures, widened eyes, expressionless glances. She helps us to care about a character who doesn't ordinarily deserve her own story.

In all his films, Hayes has proven himself to have the kind of ideas that sets his work apart, an artistic vision to match and the technical ability to realize his dreams. Whereas "Superstar," "Poison" and "Dottie Gets Spanked" lapse into moments of macabre surrealism, "Safe" is unnerving precisely because it is so nightmarishly realistic. You'll probably leave the theater feeling like you're still trapped in the film.

In other parts of the country, "Safe" has received a mixed reception. Some critics have wanted a  more consistent tone, or more homoeroticism (there is none), or a more conclusive ending, all of which would have undermined the film. San Francisco may give this film its warmest reception. To an audience used to dealing with AIDS, environmental concerns, identity issues, healing rituals and spirituality, "Safe" will be thought about, discussed and deeply understood.

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