review:: SAFE (dvd)

Her subconscious has been waiting and waiting for her to be worthy, and now it's just impatient. Finally, her body decides to do what her mind won't: it revolts, becomes revolting.

This is the tale of Carol, the unsuspecting recipient of the world's toxins in Todd Hayne's Safe, a film ostensibly about environmental illness.

Living in the California hills with her husband and his son from a previous marriage, she tends to her garden, does aerobics, carpools, and orders furniture for their living room. She is a self-described "homemaker," self-consciously avoiding the term "housewife" at the therapist's office. With her wan willowiness and genteel passivity, Carol recalls both the vapidity of a Stepford wife and tragic haplessness of Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby. Early in the film, we see her dutifully enduring the self-absorbed mechanics of her husband's libidinal thrusts, her face a vacuous, placid plateau.

Later - and this is both comical and disturbing - it is revealed that Carol literally does not sweat. This rather bizarre ability to retain toxins does not go unnoticed by the other women in her aerobics class who openly envy her. "It's true, I don't sweat," she says with the gracious modesty and misguided pride of an anorexic.

Toxin-retention, however, has its own plethora of problems, and this is where the story takes off. Whether it's exhaust fumes, cleaning chemicals, or hormone additives in her breakfast milk, Carol would appear to be a victim of environmental illness. Soon, she experiences allergic reactions to everything and becomes nauseous when her husband so much as embraces her (in a rather unconvincing "I'm there for you" sort of way). While he is initially patient and verbally supportive during this trying time of allergy tests and medical exams, he eventually loses his cool after several weeks without sex. She apologizes lamely (her operative mode, apparently) and he snaps at her irritably.

Does Carol ever conquer her so-called environmental illness? Certainly, her "illness" takes her to strange places - among other things, a support group for people with the same "disease." Dutifully adopting their modus operandi of self-blame and hyper-optimism, she seems unaware that this is partly what got her there in the first place. Presented explanations and solutions ring hollow and lame, yet Carol convinces herself that she is getting "better" and, what is more, is "becoming more aware." Eager to please and irksomely mindless, she becomes just another talk show "victim," randomly spouting new age homilies, trendy psychobabble, and the latest media-speak buzzwords to the applause of her support group.

Hayne's ambivalence for the victim is the film's provocative strength: just as Carol is relentlessly attacked from outside (toxic people, toxic environment), her facile acquiescence to everything that is done to her/expected of her is a part of this very dynamic. The possibility that there may be no solution to the world's ubiquitous poison is juxtaposed against Carol's own willingness to buy into a program in exchange for a false sense of control and social approval. The two phenomena become intertwined and intercausal; the film's tone towards this character, which could be initially interpreted as a sort of distanced, ironic sympathy, could also be one of sheer contempt. Remarkably, however, Haynes avoids any overt, simplistic "blame the victim" approach.

Is this a victim who is truly helpless? Should extreme haplessness and misfortune (as a result of, say, a bad childhood, lousy genes, societally-conditioned passivity, etc.) be considered in the same way that literal helplessness is? And does the distinction still matter in an increasingly hazardous world?

Finally and most importantly, should Carol be blamed at all for being a vulnerable and self-sacrificing martyr? Or, does Carol merely possess a benign vacuousness that only passes for virtue? Is she just a rageless vacuum, a modern-day Ophelia? Certainly she is the only presence in the film that does not emit toxins.

Haynes doesn't offer any answers and, indeed, a major point of this film is to lampoon the ones we've already been spoonfed in our culture. Rather, he stoically presents the reality: Evil happens because it can and, in this particular situation, for this particular victim, one's salvation/cure could either be a blessing or just another curse.

Safe, which could easily have been called Toxic (or Poison II for that matter), deftly shows just how ridiculous and treacherous the latter half of the twentieth century has become (while vividly contrasting certain Robert Altman films that only pretend to do so). Merciless in its judgment of the American mindset and its resulting environment, Safe is gradually harrowing and relentlessly accurate. It is easily one of the most fascinating, unforgettable movies of the nineties.

Cast & Credits
Carol: Julianne Moore // Greg: Xander Berkeley // Peter Dunning: Peter Friedman // Chris: James Legros // Nell: Mary Carver

Written And Directed By Todd Haynes. Running Time: 119 Minutes. No MPAA Rating (No Particularly Offensive Scenes).
Released: 1995