The medical melodrama typically follows one of two well-worn patterns: the patient either battles against medical indifference to find the miracle cure, or dies, stoically and with tears all round. But Todd Haynes' film, 'Safe', certainly has the merit of a distinctive narrative arc. Julianne Moore's character develops a host of allergies to substances in her environment; her condition gets progressively worse; she eventually joins what appears to be a cross between a self-help group and a cult. Is the cult real, or a fraud? Does Moore really believe it is helping her? And does she get better? The film, oddly, chooses not to answer these questions, and in it's final scenes we see Moore's character proclaiming the doctrine of self-love practiced in the commune but without any underlying confidence. Whereupon the film just ends. Clearly, it's meant to be a character study, and Moore is often praised as a fine actress, but the problem here is that her character is uninteresting. A pampered, useless executive wife, she clearly has massive self-esteem problems at the start of the movie, which are not improved by her illness; but without the miracle cure, the overall plot can be summarised as "feeble minded woman gets ill". There's some interesting material in the way that Haynes suggests that society may encourage the development of feeble-mindedness in women, but the early scenes, with their almost stylised portrait of upper-middle class life, are also deadly dull. The later scenes, with the portrait of the cult, are more interesting, although don't look for dramatic resolution. For me, the problem was that at no time did Moore's character ever reveal herself as someone with whom it could be interesting to spend any time; "pull yourself together!" may not be a fair response, but it's hard to be fair to someone so bland. I'd be interested to know exactly what Haynes was trying to do in this movie; for the truth is, I watched it while feeling I was missing the point.
Review of Safe
