Cady's Take:

Safe tells the tale of Carol White (Julianne Moore), an otherwise healthy, high-society homemaker who gradually comes down with a number of inexplicable symptoms. A new couch she purchased is delivered and its very presence seems to make her feel ill. Auto fumes begin to make her retch, a trip to the dry cleaners results in suffocating hysteria, and her hair won't take a permanent. Her doctors prescribe, her friends console and her husband tries to understand. Everyone is having a hard time putting a finger on Carol's problem, but nothing seems to cure her discomfort and, steadily, she wastes away.

After she is diagnosed as a victim, she enrolls in a wellness retreat in New Mexico called the Wrenwood Center - a community of similar sufferers. Her illness is an environmental disease that affects the immune system and Wrenwood is her retreat from a life from which she has, in essence, already retreated.

Although the major characters in Safe are heterosexual, Haynes, an openly homosexual filmmaker, states that he believes this to be a "gay film." It is, he says, an expression of his own thoughts and ideals, all of which are shaped by his sexual identity. Indeed, it isn't much of a stretch to see parallels between environmental illness and AIDS, and the director doesn't hesitate to put the screws to that portion of society best known for expressions of homophobia.

The atmosphere of dread, dejection, paranoia and claustrophobia that permeate Safe are unbearable. Safe does not provide a satisfactory resolution and the whole film resembles the first act of a larger and more sophisticated story that never actually takes place. This film is too long and too boring. It was hard to watch it in its entirety…and I am extremely upset that I wasted 2 hours of my life that I will never get back!

I dearly love Julianne Moore, and in retrospect I can see how conceptually this movie has merit and potential. Unfortunately this does not change the fact that the 119 minutes I spent watching “Safe” were excruciating. Never have I been so uninterested in characters. Never have I been so bored by plot. I pride myself on being an individual who will watch a movie from start to finish, even if I hate it, but I must confess – I begged Cady to let me shut this movie off. She did not let me do so however, and now I must tell you how I felt about “Safe.” In a nutshell:

I balanced my checkbook during the last 45 minutes of this movie.

Carol (Moore) is a rich housewife with nothing to do but workout and drink bottled water. She begins to experience dizziness, nausea, fatigue – her doctors, friends and husband all think the symptoms are in her head. Carol believes that she is allergic to, well, everything – convinced that she is “environmentally sensitive.” Others think Carol is unhappy and her mental state is manifesting itself in these phantom physical reactions. Eventually she ends up at a retreat in the desert for people “like her” – who have illnesses unexplained by medical science – and she just stays there. We never really find out what is wrong with Carol and what is more – who cares? This movie killed more brain cells than a frat party and I am not a better person for having watched it. I understand the ideas (can we make our selves sick? can we become allergic to our surroundings?) I just do not understand why the writer/director Todd Haynes (who did “Far From Heaven” – also with Moore – which I loved) could not find a way to make it interesting.