5/5 environMENTAL ILLNESS...
  by Bindy Sue Frønkünschtein (under the rubble)
Having lived my early childhood through the loopy 1970s, I suddenly found myself having to be a teenager in the stultifyingly sterile '80s! SAFE captures this dull, self-obsessed decade perfectly. Carol White (Julianne Moore from Hannibal) is a typically rich, near-catatonic house-spouse with a seemingly pristine existence. Carol has everything that we were led to believe is vitally important for happiness. She is completely protected from the urban horrors of the city, living in her mammoth estate, walled off from all lesser reality. Unfortunately, there is no true escape for Carol, as she begins having physical reactions to the white noise that is her life. Carol has environmental sensitivity, a metaphor that captures the alienation, desolation, and ridiculousness of the entire "Me-Me!" generation. Xander Berkeley (Candyman) plays Greg, Carol's frustrated, confused husband. He has all the warmth and understanding of a slab of marble and isn't afraid to show it! Carol gets increasingly worse, sicker, crazier. Greg looks on like a helpess witness of the Hindenberg disaster. Doctors and therapists are useless. Carol finally finds her salvation in a place called Wrenwood, where a cult leader and his followers accept Carol with open arms and wide smiles. Wrenwood allows Carol to spiral down to the absolute bottom. She discovers her total lack of inner lIfe. Her lack of identity. Her interior emptiness. Carol enters the subtle horror of self-affirmation, where she must remind herself that she does actually exist. However, her whole reason for being is now linked forever to her condition. Carol's illness is her identity now. She is the sick one. She is SAFE... P.S.- Watch for the creepy "Lester" character as he lurches along the perifery of the Wrenwood grounds. He's like a zombie-puppet on spider legs! He's probably the most disturbing thing about the movie...

2/5 Absolutely nothing happens.
  by Matt (Denver, NC)
I gave [SAFE] more of a chance than I would anything else, because I hoped and prayed that after 118 minutes, there could somehow be an ending that made up for the silence, the tension, the depression leading up to it. I was impressed by only a few things in [SAFE]. The acting by all involved, most importantly the completely different looking (and sounding) Julianne Moore, is simply excellent. It's understated and drab, just what the film succeeds at best. The music, the clothing and the sets evoke the '80s, the time of the film. The single biggest problem is that you desperately want the plot to lead to a huge ending that wows you, especially after sitting through such a depressing ride of a film - and it does not happen. I just don't get it.

2/5 Falls flat
  by Bradley F. Smith (Miami Beach, FL)
Gets off to a great start that is eery and weird. But then it morphs into something about people who are allergic to the environment. That's when it gets very boring indeed. You keep expecting something scary to happen. It has a Stepford Wives quality that never pays off. Not worth the bother.

2/5 Not What I Expected
  by TNAntiquer
As an individual who suffers from some chemical sensitivities, I purchased this movie, thinking that it was really going to be an eye-opening movie for those around me who do not smell the off-gassing carpets, particle-board furniture, or fabric softeners. Instead, I found a movie that begins with a woman who suddenly becomes environmentally ill, but ends with her entering a "safe haven," do nothing for her community instead of a true environmental clinic that would actually assist her in improving her health. I was very disappointed in the movie. And, yes, there are some of us who have been over-exposed to some chemicals that truly become environmentally sensitive!

3/5 Some recoil from pine-scented cleaning power
  by Geoff Oldham (Tell City, IN USA)
I had seen this movie a few years ago and really liked it, so I was eager to watch it again at some point and get it up on this site. At that time I was going to gather a themed collection of horror movies that aren't really horror movies, but that idea fell away and now I can't remember what any of the other movies in it might have been.

We open with these credits as we see the driver's POV of a car moving through a subdivision at night. This is the San Fernando Valley of 1987. Then we see Julianne Moore as Carol, having sex with her husband. She is clearly not interested, but she's good, the way she goes through the motions of periodically rubbing his back and giving him a little kiss after he's done. She goes to aerobics class, and afterward her friends observe that she doesn't sweat.

Carol is expecting a new couch to be delivered. She comes home to receive a call from her mother [Carol: "He's fine. She's fine. They're fine. I will. I will, mother."], then turns to see that the couch has come, and it's black. It's black and she ordered teal! This is the start of all Carol's problems, and this time, it hit all too close to home for me: I'M expecting a couch to be delivered in a few days! Would mine, too, prove to be an ominous omen of lingering ill reproach?

By this time you will have noticed that there is always some sort of TV or radio on in the background. Carol's discovery of the couch is hilariously set to "Turn Your Love Around," and we hear many other examples of the banal media that surrounds us. Her maids gossip in Spanish and ignore Carol's calls. Carol returns to the store and is informed that the order states she wanted black. "Well that's impossible," she says, "because it doesn't go with anything we have." Afterward, she is driving behind a truck that does not seem to be meeting state and federal emissions regulations. She starts coughing uncontrollably, and pulls into a parking garage, driving through the anonymous space as she hacks and wheezes. It's creepy and scary.

SPOILERS > > >
We cut from a line of cars on the freeway to a shot of the planet Earth--I love thematically obvious stuff like this. Then her son reads his school report at dinner, about street gangs, with special emphasis on murders, shootings, stabbings, dismemberment.... Then Carol gets a perm--and a nosebleed. Around this time one has begun to notice the large amount of shots set near windows with cars passing by outside. Her husband finds that Carol no longer wants to have sex. He holds her--and she pukes!

One day she finds a flyer in the supermarket saying "Are you allergic to the 20th century?" which informs her about people who are environmentally sensitive. She goes to her doctor, but he can't find anything wrong with her. She has another attack at a baby or wedding shower, and tells her husband that she's become allergic to all the chemicals that pervade our environment. "So you think you've been sick because of... bug spray?" he asks.

It goes on. Eventually Carol builds 'safe' room in her house, and soon after takes off for Rainwood, this retreat for chemically-sensitive people, where she meets a featured patient played by Jessica Harper of Suspiria and Phantom of the Paradise. She also meets guru Peter, who one patient says is environmentally sensitive AND has AIDS, so "his perspective is incredibly vast." Depending on your point of view, she either finds understanding at last or goes completely off the deep end.
< < < SPOILERS END

As a conversation piece, it brings up a great deal, chief among which is whether this illness is real at all, or just psychosomatic. When I watched this the first time, I thought it was quite obvious that it was psychosomatic, but now I think the movie is fairly open about how it could be interpreted, and in many ways isn't really about environmental illness at all. There are many who interpret it to be about AIDS, but I think it's mostly about disaffection from the modern world [making it a great double-feature with Ghost World], with the title being ironic; can we ever really be safe? What does it mean to be safe? Most of the chemicals in the products we use are at 'safe' levels. We are clearly shown that Carol doesn't enjoy sex with her husband, but what's interesting about the movie, leaving it open to interpretation, is that although the rest of Carol's life seems boring and banal to US, with the constant talk radio and insipid music [not that "Turn Your Love Around" is insipid... well, okay, but not that that's a problem], and aerobics classes and showers and fruit diets, we don't necessarily get much evidence that it's banal to HER. That is to say, her life in incredibly empty, but we don't know for sure if she finds it empty, or we're just projecting onto her.

Now I have "Turn Your Love Around" in my head.

Part of what made me feel this way was an article in New York Magazine about parents with chemical sensitivities, and it mentioned that those people consider this movie their statement. I was like; "WHAT?! It's an obvious satire!" but upon review, maybe it's not that obvious. So who knows. Regardless, you might find this Wiki page on MCS, or Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, fascinating, as I did. In it we find that doctors can still find no evidence of a physical basis for their symptoms, and that MCS correlates strongly with depression...

Since I watched the movie, I read the essay the writer / director wrote for the DVD booklet, and learned, somewhat to my disappointment, that he does in fact believe in environmental illness, and was making this completely clear and straightforward movie about it. He also explicitly states that he also saw it as a parallel to the AIDS crisis. So, shows what the I know, though I consider it a strength that the movie can be interpreted in multiple ways. By the way, this movie shares an odd number of elements with The Incredible Shrinking Woman. In that film, Lily Tomlin begins shrinking because of all the chemicals in her environment, and there is a similar scene of her trapped in a car with an aerosol chemical, and coughing terribly.

But, as a movie? Definitely interesting, but perhaps it leaves a bit to be desired in the storytelling department. This is more of a statement than a drama. Carol has an attack! Then she has a worse attack! Then a WORSE attack! That's about the structure of the screenplay, and while I found it very compelling the first time, in retrospect I think maybe that was just the novelty of the concept. This time--there just isn't much of a story here. The movie is still quite different and worth watching, it's just less of a complete story and structured film than I hoped it would be. It's kind of more of a conversation piece than anything.