I don't understand a lot of things. One of those is that New York gets a lot more movies than Detroit does and gets everything earlier than we do but yet they have some of the crappiest theaters I've been in. No, not as crappy as dollar shows like Riverview's Showboat or the Wyandotte Theater—I mean you pay upwards of eight dollars and get less than perfect sound and projection. Hell, at the Angelika on Houston you've got subways running every ten minutes that are highly audible. This kind of took away from the great sound mix in Safe—but then, sitting in the second row didn't help much either.

I suppose the reason why NY gets all the movies we don't, and so much earlier, is that they actually have an audience there. I can't picture a film like Safe even coming close to filling up a rinky-dink theater like the Maple on an opening Friday night, much less a Sunday matinee!

Safe was directed by Todd Haynes—who caused quite a stir with his first film, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Superstar is a marvelous film! In case you're unaware—it's the story of one of America's sweethearts, all done with dolls. No, it's not cheesy, it's great. Haynes has had a constant theme of the role of women in society since this early work. The idea of using Barbie-type dolls to show what girls are fed as the ideal and what they have to live up to and why they break down is fantastic.

Haynes exposes the suburban underbelly in his films much the way David Lynch did in Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. All is not love and logs in Lumberton—there's something insidious in our surroundings. Haynes used this in the three-pronged Poison, and again in Safe. I hear there's a similar theme to his short Dottie Gets Spanked but I have not been able to find this anywhere (help!).

Safe is another great study in the roles of women. Julianne Moore plays Carol White—an upper class housewife-er-homemaker whose scotch-guarded world might not stain easily but holds other dangers. Carol contracts an "Environmental Illness" where she can no longer handle the 60,000 chemicals that one comes into contact with in everyday life. Of course, she is considered crazy by her doctor since he has no definite diagnosis and is sent to a psychiatrist. This is the telling moment for me in the film, as her M.D. hands the shrink's card to her husband and talks about her as if she wasn't even there.

Luckily, this film doesn't become a big debate of whether she's having a psychosomatic reaction to her sterile and boring life or if her condition is a valid medical concern. It does, however, question the way in which she deals with it.

Carol eventually retreats to Wrenwood treatment center, which is run by a new age demagogue whose song and dance routine appears very cultish even from the get-go and whose cold "blame the victim" tactics left me stunned. I believe that a lot of the cure for her illness lies in getting some self esteem.

Carol speaks in up-speak? That condition? Where women? State things in question? So that they don't appear too forward? Since women's opinions? Still aren't held? In the highest regard? By the patriarchy? Get it?

There are a lot of nice things going on in Safe—good story, the aforementioned sound mix, and some nice 2001: A Space Odyssey camera-work that has long static shots where Carol is usually the least important object in the frame while her furniture takes precedence. Haynes is a very subtle director. He uses mirrors in a low-key "if you get Lacan, cool, if not, it still looks good" kind of way and doesn't do a big old Atom "the guys at film school will love this one" Egoyan bullshit.

However, subtle can too often become dull—and it does here. I was getting very sleepy towards the end of this film and found that the rumble from the subway was the only thing keeping me awake for the second-to-last reel. Definitely do not watch this one late at night.

I recommend checking out his other stuff first—especially Superstar. I'm not sure of all the places that this "banned" forty-five minute film is available (the movie Richard Carpenter and Mattel don't want you to see) but I know one place is through the over-priced Video Search of Miami (see Two Lane Blacktop review for address).

One final note—comparing different reviews of Safe I found that an LA critic watching it with a midwest audience couldn't fathom all the laughter the film was generating—most of it coming from the hokey New Age stuff. I guess they take it pretty serious on the West Coast while the rest of the jaded world takes it with a grain of salt.

-- mb