Safe

Rating:
Summary: sick,sick,sick!
Review: This is the sickest film I have ever seen. If that is the object of the film - fair enough. It left me feeling unwell and with terrible nightmares! Such a grey depressing movie it is a wonder that there are people that have actualy enjoyed this nightmarish insight into the life of a depressed and totally sick woman. SLOW paced and devoid of any life whatsoever I recommend this movie only if you want to see just how depressing a film can make you feel.

Rating:
Summary: I agree with Leonard Maltin
Review: This video really doesn't gel and for me had that "made for TV/based on a true story" feel. I could never connect with the main character Carol enough to care about what happened to her and the ending seemed abrupt and pointless. I was very disappointed, I usually like Julianne Moore.

Rating:
Summary: not meant for one interpretation
Review: The best thing about this movie is that a viewers' reaction to it probably tells more about him or her than the film itself. My friends who have had this movie foisted upon them by me have had a variety of reactions, from utter frustration to a rather disturbing identification with it.

For myself, I found it the most realistic (or maybe the only) depiction of psychosomatic illness in film. I felt sorry for Moore's character's psychological problems, but I also was amused by the darkly funny satire worked into the critically underappreciated last half of the movie. (Viewed in this way, it's like a Saturday Night Live spoof of a self-help clinic.)

I do wish that the studio would price for sale. All thirty people who actually liked the movie would buy it.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely heartbreaking
Review: You've really got to pay attention and be steeled for what's coming with this one, but is it well worth the effort! Moore--in perhaps the finest film performance given in the last decade--plays a gentle, almost simpering, wealthy trophy wife in Los Angeles who can barely fill her days with activity, yet has little understanding of how empty her days are. The film proceeds at almost a glacial pace to convey fully her anomie, but it so lulls you into the rhythms of her life that when she begins (literally) to sicken from her life you become fully aware of its shock to her system. Her pathetic search for a cure, or at least an explanation, to her condition is basically her only possible attempt to find any kind of meaning to her sad life, and by the end of the film--when her colleagues at the wellness center call upon her to make a speech, and she complies--you'll be utterly devastated at what she discovers about herself. The last image of Moore speaking to herself in the mirror is no less heartbreaking. Truly a masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: A work of genius
Review: We are lazy audiences these days. The Hollywood formula - tell me what to think, tell me again, and again a third time at the end - is so rarely broken that when it is, as it is here, reviewers oftimes respond with bewilderment or even anger. Safe forces us to think for ourselves. Beautifully shot, superbly acted, and realistically written, the film can be seen on many levels - satire, allegory, even straight documentary. After all, the New Mexico treatment center in which the second half of the film takes place does actually exist - in reality just outside the town of Wimberley in Texas. The main character's story is very typical of many of the patients of that center. And as a one-time sufferer of the condition she portrays, I can vouch for the accuracy of the film, and the bewilderment and despair the condition brings about, while accepting that there may be any of a thousand explanations for it. The film, then, was something of an epiphany for me, but is fascinating, funny and beautiful enough for anyone who enjoys making decisions for themselves.

Rating:
Summary: Maltin's review is off - written for a mainstream audience
Review: Safe is one of those uncategorizable films. Nominally a drama (I suppose), it lacks the heavy-handed sledge-hammer effect of most dramas in the mass market (hence Maltin's description of the second half as "slow"). Instead, it is more a brooding, contemplative film, struggling with and accepting, the inevitability of entropy, decay, and death. No matter how Moore tries to fight it, it keeps stalking her.

Maltin got one thing absolutely right, though - Moore's performance is excellent (and this was what she did just before "Lost World").

Rating:
Summary: Anything but safe.
Review: Safe - movie, 4 stars

Named by the Village Voice as the Best Film of the 1990s, this resounding social statement a-la-TV-movie-of-the-week is certainly anything but what its title suggests. Director Todd Haynes has the reputation of pushing limits and making audiences strangely uncomfortable, and this film is no exception.

San Fernando Valley, circa 1989. Carol White (Julianne Moore) is living her perfectly stereotypical upper-middle-class life when suddenly she becomes sick. When she has allergic reactions to all sorts of chemicals around her, her husband (Xander Berkeley) and doctor think it's all in her head. However, the hopelessly reserved Carol knows her "environmental illness" is legitimate, uprooting herself and moving into the chemically-sterile community of Wrenwood, New Mexico. There, she is treated for her mysterious illness by self-help guru Peter Dunning (Peter Friedman) and his bright-eyed cohorts; however, her health continues to decline.

The film's statement is quite difficult to detect upon first viewing. Certainly, the plot is extremely reminiscent of many TV-movies of the 80s and 90s, all showcasing a new disease of the week. However, it eventually becomes apparent that the film is not a commentary on environmental illness.

Performances in the film are all at best adequate, with the exception of Moore, who is undeniably brilliant. Her detatched, sad carriage and demeanor arguably echoes more loudly than the film's social statement. Of course, she depends heavily on her subtleties as usual, and when she's onscreen, it's difficult to pay attention to anything else. Her birthday scene, toward the end of the film, is particularly moving.

Haynes's direction is seemingly bland at times-- one may feel as if he's watching a horror movie on Valium. However, Haynes's complexities eventually show through and what we see is a brillantly sincere and deep commentary on a rather provocative question: Is anyone ever really safe?

Rating:
Summary: Where the Stepford Wives Began
Review: Julianne Moore does another fabulous job as an LA housewife exposed to the hazards of suburbia. The film is dark and stale adding to the creepiness of its message.

Moore's housewife is lifeless, she exists in LA going from post office to dry cleaners to aerobics class. She sips milk while her Spanish housecleaner does all the actual work of keeping up a home. She does her "wifely duties" with the same boredom with which she lives. Her world is protected and safe but she somehow ends up ill (is it real toxic poisoning or just a cry for attention?) and it all gets chalked up to stress.....what stress could she be having? The creepiness lies in how easily she gets programmed by all the others in her life. With no direction of her own she exists as a mere robotic representation of what she is supposed to be. How many of those do you see in a day?

Moore soon becomes so strangely ill that she can't even perform her meaniless tasks. This eventially lands her in a cultish type retreat where she is supposed to get well. Without her own backbone she flounders around influenced by everything external and open to all sorts of advice except what works. So we learn two messages in one movie, first be your own person and second that our environment may in fact be causing more undiagnosed illness than we imagine. Find your own influences before the Jones' get you down and above all stay SAFE!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Psychological Drama with Lingering Effect
Review: Carol White (Julianne Moore), a homemaker, lives a life without doing the daily chores of a housewife as the family maid takes care of household tasks. In essence Carol has only one responsibility: her leisure time. She tries to fill her free time with aerobics, beauty salon visits, and new acquisitions for their safeguarded home. These activities do not provide an outlet for Carol's own identity as she is a mere trophy wife. Eventually Carol's body begins to rebel against herself through nausea, headaches, and nose bleeding. The family doctor examines Carol and he finds nothing wrong as her physical miseries worsen. Carol is sent to a psychiatrist, but her subdued persona does not cooperate. Carol's health continues to deteriorate as she discovers an organization that enlightens people about environmental illness. Environmental illness is an over hypersensitivity to pollution, pesticides, and all other toxins in the environment that exist in foods, perfumes and make-up among other things. This means that Carol must remove herself from civilization and the world in which she lives. Carol departs for a new age health sanctuary, Wrenwood, where she begins her recovery. Initially Carol improves physically, however, as she comes across a closely located highway her health begins to decline again.

Safe has a lingering effect as it slowly moves forward as Haynes purposely displays each scene in order to build a deep understanding of Carol's identity. It becomes an exploration of Julianne Moore's character as Haynes dissects Carol's psychology through meticulous direction of every scene. When the scenes are edited together it leaves the audience with a profound insight of Carol's illness. This insight offers a disturbing experience as Carol's decisions continue to affect her negatively both physically and socially. Julianne Moore's performance enhances the distortion of her character's mind as she performs brilliantly, which leaves the audience with a fascinating cinematic experience.

Rating:
Summary: too close to home
Review: I can never make up my mind about Julianne Moore. She is undeniably talented, but sometimes I just don't like her. In Safe, Moore is astounding as a woman who comes to suffer from mysterious "environmental illness". The illness grows progressively worse, and she seeks help from a variety of conventional and homeopathic doctors. The root of her problems don't seem clear, and doctors tell her she is not really sick. She drives herself crazy wondering what is wrong with her, wondering why people don't believe her. Watching her struggle and frustration was interesting because Moore embodied this frustration perfectly. At the same time, though, I felt the whole story hit too close to home for me because I had a close relative go through a similar crisis of identity/health/depression, and being the helpless bystander to what appears to be imaginary illness is incredibly difficult and frustrating. Xander Berkeley as Moore's confused husband is excellent, acting both as a concerned husband but one who runs out of options and does not understand where his wife is coming from nor necessarily who she is or who/how she needs him to be. He never quite reaches a stage of total indifference, but he is frustrated because he does not have a clue what he can do nor what she is going through. As such, this was an interesting look at dynamics in marital relations, and indeed in human relations (how people behave toward others... most perceived Moore's character to be a hypochondriac, and this colored the way they behaved toward her, for example). I would recommend this movie, although I would not say it is an uplifting choice.