Suburban hell

Todd Haynes' new film is heavenly

November 22, 2002

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

9

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Out Ohio director Todd Haynes has created a sublime new piece of contemporary cinema that is so coolly retro that it seems like it could compete for the Best Film Oscar in 1958 or 2003. His latest film Far From Heaven is a cinematic homage to the great Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s, especially the florid films of auteur Douglas Sirk.

Haynes, who is one of a handful of openly queer directors working in Hollywood today, came to prominence with a masterful short biography of the late Karen Carpenter who succumbed to anorexia nervosa. His film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story was created and told entirely through the use of dolls.

Since then, Haynes has always worked out of the mainstream, and has created an interesting ar challenging body of work in a relatively short period of time. His first feature film, Poison, was an amalgamation of three Jean Genet tales of transgression which dealt with sexuality, sadism and the struggle between flesh and spirit. It won Best Feature Film at the Sundance Film festival in 1991 and became a cult classic. Haynes had made his mark on the independent film circuit.

His second feature, Safe, chronicled the life of a California housewife who finds herself becoming allergic to everything in the environment in which she lives. Safe was, via its subtext, an allegory about living under the cloud of AIDS. Velvet Goldmine, his third feature, took a wild journey through the world of glam rock, tracing the rise and fall of a fictional rock star.

Haynes' latest epic is really a culmination of all his past. In Far From Heaven he reteams with his favorite leading lady, Julianne Moore. As in all his films, things are never what they seem on the surface. In this film, Haynes has taken that idea to its dizzying zenith.

Set in the placid, seeming-perfection of the 1950s, Haynes' film takes on the taboo social issues of miscegenation, sexuality, and infidelity.

Cathy Whitaker is a privileged housewife. The picture of a perfect suburban family, the Whitakers are completely enmeshed in the etiquette, the mores, and the surface attributes of keeping up with the Joneses. Underneath the surface, though, simmer repressed desires, dark secrets and vivid yearnings to break free of the restraining molds suffocating everyone in this era.

In the studio films of the period, particu-

Todd Haynes

larly in those by Sirk, the unmentionables always remained unsaid. They remained underneath the surface and yet they were not completely hidden from view. These films reflected the decade to a T.

Haynes' film starts off that way. The audience observes the mundane suburban milieu, shown the surface values of these people and their lives in perfectly coordinated Technicolor and even more perfectly coordinated wardrobes and coiffures. But then Haynes does the unthinkable. He mentions the unmentionables and the film becomes both the most classic and modern piece to emerge from Hollywood in a long time.

Cathy's husband, played by Dennis Quaid, is hiding a huge secret. He is a homosexual. What makes his predicament even more compelling is that he is struggling with these feelings in an era in which such unmentionables couldn't be spoken, not simply because they were taboo but also because no one had yet dealt with formulating the language of coming out, gay liberation, and all the other lingua franca of the modern gay movement.

And Cathy herself is drawn magnetically to her black gardener (Dennis Haysbert). As soon as this friendship begins to develop, the tongues of the town start to wag and the world begins to transform and crumble.

Sirk and other filmmakers of his ilk were unabashed sentimentalists, and Haynes doesn't balk from paying homage to that in his masterpiece. But with Haynes, once again,

nothing is what it seems and his entire film is infused with such intelligence (never once sacrificing the passion and the emotional punch of the piece) that all the early critical kudos are justified.

This film, like Poison, doesn't shy away from issues of sex and sexuality and the mise en scene in the film is absolutely stunning.

Moore's performance, already having won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, is startlingly simple and complex all at once. "She is quite simply one of the best actresses of her generation-perhaps the only legitimate challenger to the inimitable Meryl Streep. Like Streep, Moore always manages to disappear completely into her roles. She inhabits each persona without inhibition.

Far From Heaven is produced by George Clooney, Steven Soderbergh and Christine Vachon, an openly lesbian producer who has amassed an impressive resume of acclaimed films including Boys Don't Cry, Go Fish and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Haynes, Moore, Haysbert, Quaid and the film itself will most certainly be rewarded at Oscar time, and the film should also be acknowledged for its screenplay, costumes and cinematography.

Far From Heaven is as close to cinematic paradise as it gets. Haynes, who continues to impress and get better with each film, has still managed to remain relevant, edgy and thought-provoking.

Far From Heaven