P E R F O R M A N C E

Safe

Character: Carol White. Housewife. Hesistant Interior Designer. Allergic to everything.

Traditional Moore bits: Emotional paralysis. Daring choice in roles.

Best scenes: I have two favorites: The first is her coughing jag in the car. She plays it not for sympathy but as the character would live it... like at first she's trying to stifle it so as not to cause a scene (even though she's alone) and then sinking into desperation of fear. The second is the last scene in the film. That moment will stand as one of the most haunting in 90s cinema.

Awards: Many. But not as many as she deserved.

General Response & Career Impact: This film really started it all. The Cult of Julianne began with her transcendent and masterful work here.

What critics said...

They LOVE her...

The film's most obvious generic allusion is to the disease-of-the-week movie, where central characters' moral fibers are tested and viewers' tears are jerked. But _Safe_ won't go there, it doesn't solicit tears; instead, it makes your relation to what you're seeing untenable, confusing, irritating, and fascinating. It sets you up, with a relentlessly chilly visual tone, while continually slipping the knot on any expectations. Dominated by a series of numbing, wide-shot architectural compositions that won't let you "identify'' with Carol, the movie only gestures toward sympathy for her. Moore is extraordinary in this difficult role, luminous and eerily blank, fragile and determined: you really want to feel something for her, but Carol is so dopey and bland, she's hard to hang onto. I've seen it twice now, and both times audience responses were fragmented. The first time, viewers were hushed and clearly uncomfortable; several walked out, letting their seats flop back with loud bangs to emphasize their disgust. The second time, there was again some shifting in seats, some bored or weirded-out coughing, but also some pointed laughter; the character vacuum seems less threatening if you laugh, maintain your own distance.

Cynthia Fuchs -George Mason University

With her tiny voice and passive character, uninvolved during sex and incapable of sweating in aerobics class, Carol has the doll-like existence of an up-to-date Stepford wife. A "total milkaholic" who wears pearls to lunch and spends her days gardening, exercising and worrying about furniture, Carol is a Nora who never even thinks of slamming the door, who looks around at her elite surroundings and is content. Julianne Moore, who was a revelation in "Vanya on 42nd Street," continues to do remarkable work in a role she wanted so much she reportedly burst into tears when she got it. Ever so delicately, she animates this detached mouse, allowing us to feel for the kind of passive, emotionally disconnected character whose first thought when illness encroaches is to apologize for the inconvenience she's causing.

Kenneth Turan -Los Angeles Times

Julianne Moore, in a role that she was made to play, is Carol White, a well-heeled, rather repressed homemaker from the San Fernando Valley whose pale, near-iridescent skin and tiny "baby voice" immediately reveal her as a uniquely delicate, almost otherworldly creature. The excellent Moore makes us both empathize and laugh, not an easy feat considering the material. Moore has been on the verge of stardom for a few years now after debuting with a dynamite performance in "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" (1992) and being wasted earlier this summer in "Nine Months," with "Short Cuts" and "The Fugitive" (both 1993), and "Vanya on 42nd Street" (1994) coming in between. This film should do it for her.

Joe Baltake -Sacramento Bee

Safe is an independent film - no Hollywood studio would touch something this contentious, complicated, and damned depressing - but it boasts a rising star in the lead role. She is Julianne Moore, Hugh Grant's pregnant gal pal in Nine Months and a subtly powerful actress. The puckish redhead Moore happens to be as beautiful and sensuous as she is brainy, so Haynes sets out to make her look absolutely awful by the end of the movie while finally letting her find herself mentally. This is not at all the wicked farce that some were expecting from the same risk-taking filmmaker who offered us Poison in 1991 and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (completely told with Barbie dolls) in 1988. Instead, Safe is an emotional downer, a controlled, claustrophobic examination of a very real world. Yet Moore is so selfless, so exceptional in her performance, that we are kept totally involved even at times when we'd rather run away.

Bruce Kirkland -Toronto Sun

Writer-director Todd Haynes, who made the importantly weird short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and Poison, a minimalist epic of sex and longing in the age of aids, again has decay and estrangement in mind. This scarily confident, beautifully acted study is gnomic and anomic, like a TV disease movie made in an alternate universe. And in Moore's pretty, aggrieved face, Haynes finds the ideal vessel for his concerns.

Richard Corliss -Time Magazine

As hapless Carol, Julianne Moore gives the most delicate, touching performance weÕve seen all year and proves once more she;Õs the best of the new crop of actresses

Edward Guthman -San Francisco Chronicle

As White, Julianne Moore contributes and extraordinary performance, the kind that deserves an Oscar but wonÕt get because the film refuses to deliver a Hollywood ending that ties up all the loose ends in a comforting knot. Throughout WhiteÕs collapse. Moore is restrained, fragile, yet intese. Panic comes across is little gestures, widened eyes, expressionless glances. She helps up to care about her character who doesnÕt ordinarily deserve her own story.

Barry Walters -Examiner

The deceptively simple story follows Carol White (the remarkable Julianne Moore), an out-of-touch, Stepford Wife-like Southern California housewife who, despite being buffeted by a wealth of material comforts and a loving husband, finds her body slowly ravaged by allergic reactions to everyday chemicals, fragrances, and fumes.

Popcorn Q

Regular readers of mine will know by now that Julianne Moore is hands-down my favorite actress on the planet, and SAFE marks the best role of her career. Moore easily deserves an Oscar nod, if not the statue...

Christopher Null -Film Critic.Com

Julianne Moore gives a great performance as Carol and is, I think, in every single scene of the film. It says a lot for her immense talents as an actress that she can create an interesting character who says not very much and is fairly inarticulate and yet she holds our attention throughout the film...

Vince Deehan

They like her...

Carol (Julianne Moore) is a suburban housewife, spending her days tending her gardens, socializing with her fluffy friends, satisfying her husbands needs and aerobicizing (although [android?] she never breaks a sweat). Julianne Moore glides through her role with a tentative grace, her pale complexion and delicate features working hand in hand with a hesitant and unassertive demeanor. She is the perfect victim-heroine for the director/writer's subject, and he seems both critical and sympathetic of her, effectively walking the line between the two.

Kirk Hostetter -24 Frames Per Second

Julianne Moore (Short Cuts, Nine Months) gives a standout performance as the afflicted housewife, even though her character is little more than a thinly-drawn caricature. Carol doesn't come across as a real person -- she's another spoke in the wheel of Haynes' satire, a stereotype who decorates the house for her family, "does lunch" with her best friend, and endures her husband's insensitive lovemaking. Until her debilitating affliction is manifested, a crisis is when the furniture store delivers the wrong color couch. Carol's shallowness is one of the reasons why the director's dramatic efforts fall short. Without a fully-realized central character to care about, it's difficult to develop much sympathy for her tragic situation.

James Berardinelli -Reel Views

They're not so impressed...

The double-edged sword of Haynes' technique is that Carol is always kept at something of a distance. Cinematographer Alex Nepomniaschy uses the crisp, clear style of Stanley Kubrick, and those who fault Kubrick's films for their coldness will probably have the same problem with Safe. Julianne Moore is a brilliant actor, but Carol is an enigma whose plight never achieves an emotional connection. In a way, however, the distance is necessary. Safe is presented to us like a tour of an alien world. It is only when you realize that the world is our own that Safe's real horror washes over you like a toxic cloud.

Scott Renshaw -Screening Room

They hate her...





-Review excerpts compiled by Nathaniel exclusively for FiLM BiTCH with a lot of help from the MRQE and some from rotten tomatoes