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Safe Review
By Bruce Kirkland
Toronto Sun

Safe, a very serious movie drama about a woman who suffers from environmental illness, is one of those provocative events in cinema that challenges what audiences expect.

And it does so with such tenacity that we're left sitting uncomfortable in the theatre - which is exactly what maverick U.S. filmmaker Todd Haynes wants to accomplish.

Written and directed by Haynes and set in the San Fernando Valley of California where he grew up, Safe chronicles how a Valley housewife, who had been living on automatic pilot in a suburban fantasyland, finds herself physically deteriorating from a variety of chemical and food allergies that eventually force her to seek refuge in a New Age health clinic in New Mexico.

The story focuses on how her family and friends treat her as a mental case, not a woman with a real disease. The heroine is forced to find answers within.

Safe also forces the audience to reassess values such as materialism versus health and rhetoric versus results.

Safe is an independent film - no Hollywood studio would touch something this contentious, complicated, and damned depressing - but it boasts a rising star in the lead role. She is Julianne Moore, Hugh Grant's pregnant gal pal in Nine Months and a subtly powerful actress.

The puckish redhead Moore happens to be as beautiful and sensuous as she is brainy, so Haynes sets out to make her look absolutely awful by the end of the movie while finally letting her find herself mentally.

This is not at all the wicked farce that some were expecting from the same risk-taking filmmaker who offered us Poison in 1991 and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (completely told with Barbie dolls) in 1988.

Instead, Safe is an emotional downer, a controlled, claustrophobic examination of a very real world. Yet Moore is so selfless, so exceptional in her performance, that we are kept totally involved even at times when we'd rather run away.

Safe is obviously not about safety; it's about how environmental illness - everything from chemicals in carpets and furniture to the effect of electromagnetic waves - can affect virtually anyone. Moore's character is everywoman - and everyman, of course.

Haynes layers on the life lessons extremely heavily. Safe plays out quietly but its message is loud and long. That doesn't make this a great film, but the message happens to be worth hearing.

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