Todd Hayes' Safe: illness as metaphor in the 90s.

As for the 1990s cinema, we are impressed by its diversity. There are films reflecting the continuing maturation of established directors and some fascinating new filmmakers whose achievements convey a sophisticated, expressive use of style and form. Our list of praiseworthy works include Martin Scorsese's Casino, Claude Chabrol's La Ceremonie, Spike Lee's Get on the Bus, Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden, Zhang Yimou's Shanghai Triad, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Goodbye South, Goodbye among others.

One of the most provocative films by a relatively young filmmaker recently released, that explores women's identity in the late 20th century, is Todd Haynes' Safe (1995). Haynes' body of work thus far includes two features and a number of shorts that evidence the director's concerns with the social pressures of conformity which often are manifested in physical forms. Although Haynes identifies himself as a gay filmmaker, his commitment to exploring oppression and dysfunction extends to other disenfranchised members of society, including children, women as well as gays - those not empowered or able to control their environment and construct a place for themselves that allows for self-expression. Many of the characters in Haynes' work feel alienated and displaced in their immediate surroundings. Seemingly familiar, commonplace spaces found within American suburbia become sinister and threatening to their inhabitants. (1)

Haynes' attention to space and environment aligns him with a number of post-war European filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard (Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle), Ingmar Bergman (Persona), Michelangelo Antonioni (Red Desert) - Haynes mentions screening the Antonioni film in preparation for the making of Safe. He also says that Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was an influence on the film. (2) All of these filmmakers place the protagonists' sense of alienation within particular landscapes. This tradition is not as strongly pronounced in the American cinema; interestingly, a number of European emigres working within classical Hollywood (Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Max Ophuls, Douglas Sirk) presented a critical, ironic view of everyday American life and explore similar issues of social displacement. Among contemporary directors Martin Scorsese continues this tradition and, in a film such as Taxi Driver, presents a radical critique of social malaise by inextricably connecting his characters to their environment. Haynes, like Scorsese, brings a critical observant perspective to a distinctly American understanding of contemporary social life and its attendant pressures and demands. Again, like Scorsese, Haynes pays attention to the traditions of American culture and draws from them. Taxi Driver employs generic conventions of the Western (John Ford's The Searchers) and the horror film to address its concerns. Haynes too draws directly from the horror film (Poison) but, even more pointedly, the melodrama, a genre that particularly accommodates the exploration of personal identity within the larger context of social reality and dramatizes the resulting conflicts inevitably produced. Melodrama expresses the ineffable, the attempted protests which cannot find legitimate, concrete expression. Rebellion is often manifested inwardly, as an implosion in the personal realm, exteriorised as illness or breakdown.

Haynes' use of melodrama as a means to comment on the social climate of the 80's links him with the intensified use of the genre in the 50's post-war period. In both decades, one finds a social milieu represented by a surface veneer of stability in the form of family, conformity and suburban existence. In the films of the 50's and 80's, decades of apparent social quiet, danger invariably is connected to an outside threat, as opposed to being found within the idealized community. The 80's indulgence in upscale homes, the obsessively moulded human body and grand scale consumption masks internal discontent and spiritual angst which often leads to a search for gratification outside of immediate material consumerism. The excess of these decades is rooted in a firm belief in the power of money to buy everything, including health and happiness; but, in actuality, this belief functions as a facade papering over unease, doubt, scepticism and a growing sense of a potential disaster.

Michael Tolkin's The Rapture is another 90's film which explores the relationship between physical, material indulgence and mental and spiritual breakdown. (3) And manifestations of cultural tensions and upheaval arise in a number of contemporary horror films, particularly in the works of David Cronenberg where the body becomes a site of decay and the grotesque. Haynes specifically sets Safe in the moneyed bourgeois suburbia of the late 80's; significantly, it is at this time that the threat of AIDS extends beyond the gay community and drug users to the population at large. This development undermines the belief in the promised infallible body created through physical exercise, dieting and cosmetic reconstruction. Unlike Cronenberg who fetishizes the body as the ultimate site of horror, Haynes' concerns are with a conformist, consumerist culture and its relation to illness. Haynes' work moves beyond the enclosed Cronenberg world where pleasure in dismemberment becomes an end in itself; Cronenberg also places his oeuvre against a collapsing consumerist world, but his films tend to indulge and emphasize the sensorial aspects of physical pain and deterioration (ironically, giving the film consumer value for his/her money). (4) In contrast, Safe reopens the issue of 80's indulgence and its fetishization of the body and the home, as a means of articulating the uncertainties beginning to emerge. The film doesn't exploit the fear of illness and the fallibility of the body - it places these concerns against a wider network of social determinants which shape identity.

Safe's heroine, Carol White/Julianne Moore, increasingly senses her vulnerability and impending collapse, but cannot place her diminishing well-being because she has every reason to be happy. She is an attractive upper class white woman, living in a palatial home in a wealthy suburban enclave of the San Fernando Valley. She spends her days exercising, lunching with friends, redecorating her home.

As in the tradition of the melodrama, the home, and Carol's bourgeois lifestyle - ideologically promoted as a safe haven, a social place of security and comfort - manifests itself as a place of containment and danger. This is visually underlined through Haynes' mise-en-scene. Carol White is introduced in a methodical, calculated fashion in the first half of the film, through a series of vignettes which become increasingly sinister and threatening in tone. The film begins with a disquieting shot taken at night from behind the windshield in the front seat of a car; the shot is accompanied by ominous music. The car (a Mercedes) then turns into the driveway of a house fronted by a huge iron gate. The film's introductory scene continues with the couple from the car in their bedroom. The woman lies prone and seems detached but is dutiful as her husband has sex with her. The scene serves to inform the viewer that Carol participates in her life one step removed from genuine involvement. And, in quick succession, the film presents a number of disturbing scenes that subtly outline Carol's growing incompatibility with and disengagement from her immediate surroundings. Carol's home is an unsullied, sterile, expansive space kept immaculately clean and orderly. Nothing is out of order in the kitchen and the ever-present Fulvia/Martha Velez-Johnson, the maid, never hears Carol calling her because of the noise of the vacuum cleaner. Carol's routine, rigid, pastel-coloured world is one day invaded by a dark couch, mistakenly delivered to her house in the wrong colour. Carol's sense of upset (almost alarm) and the energy needed to rectify the situation suggest her inability to deal with confrontation and disorder.

The early manifestations of Carol's alleged environmental allergy are related to ruptures in Carol's conformist and controlled life. Her illness challenges the rigid patterns of her existence, giving her a means of signalling protest or rejection. Carol's physical symptoms speak of her lack of control and inability to cope with contemporary life and social relationships. Underground garages, freeway traffic, toxins and chemicals used in everyday conveniences such as dry cleaning combine to create an environment that is stress-producing, unnatural and foreboding.

To illustrate Haynes' methodical alignment of Carol's illness with her estrangement from her familiar and safe world, we will discuss three telling instances. First, the moment that suggests Carol's increasing alienation from her husband, Greg/Xander Berkeley, occurs the morning after they have had a confrontation concerning Carol's rejection of having sex with him because of her headaches. Carol's husband is seen getting ready for work, spraying himself with deodorant and hairspray. Carol breaks the silence with an apology for having felt unwell, and her husband relents and they hug. The moment of conciliation is dramatically interrupted when Carol suddenly vomits. Rationally, Carol is reacting to the excess of toxins her husband has applied to his body in his almost comical morning rituals of grooming, but visually the scene functions to indicate Carol's discontent and estrangement, surfacing in a violent, uncontrolled form.

Secondly, a less graphic but equally forceful sequence occurs soon after when Carol, unable to sleep, gets up late at night and wanders around the grounds. Her late night appearance on the grounds immediately draws the attention of two policemen in a car patrolling the neighborhood for intruders, who question her being there, as does her husband when she reenters the house. Clearly any deviance (a woman does not walk around in her yard at night) is suspect. Visually the scene takes on a hallucinatory quality as Carol is in her nightgown, disconnected from her surroundings, framed by the unnatural lights that illuminate the grounds of the house and then caught by the squad car headlights, as if she is a suspect figure in her own home.

And, third, indications of Carol's illness occur publicly when she is partaking of social activities expected of her gender and class. For instance, she feels out of sorts during an aerobics class (a succinct metaphor of control and conformity as everyone dresses and moves in exact unison, following an instructor's commands) but more tellingly, hyperventilates in the midst of a baby shower for a friend. Haynes carefully constructs the scene in a tension-building manner. Although Carol is among friends in her hostess's home, her tension and discomfort becomes increasingly palpable. The dialogues at the gathering are superficial and commonplace, consisting of hollow niceties and compliments regarding clothing, food preparation and gift wrapping. Carol disengages from the women and tries to focus on the hostess's daughter, but this strategy fails to relieve Carol's mounting stress, which the child begins to sense. Haynes records the attack with a slow track into Carol's expression of panic as her sense of constriction and airlessness mounts.

The scene, again, reworks the generic conventions from which it draws - the inability to breathe expresses suffocation, metaphorically as well as physically. Carol's lack of an identity reveals itself in her panic and inability to speak. The film systematically places these attacks at precise moments that collectively indicate Carol's rejection of and growing distance from her familiar world, which includes her husband, home, friends and places she regularly frequents such as the beauty parlour, restaurants, the health club and so forth. Carol loses her place in the world and a feeling that she is estranged increasingly becomes a reality for her.

Carol's inability to speak for herself is heightened in contexts of male dominance and control. This is particularly evident in scenes where Carol is asked to account for her symptoms and outbreaks of illness. When Carol's family practitioner fails to locate a physical explanation for Carol's reactions, he suggests they might be triggered psychologically and recommends a psychiatrist. The scene with the psychiatrist illustrates Carol's hesitation and uncertainty when she is asked to define who she is and what bothers her. In response, the psychiatrist frames Carol's illness in terms of questions in identity: "We need to be hearing from you - What's going on in you?"

Carol's most independent and active attempt to help herself occurs when she writes away for information on environmental illness, a concern that begins to preoccupy her thinking; she describes herself as having a "pretty normal upbringing" and being "basically healthy and suddenly finding myself being sick." As she writes, Carol is interrupted by her husband who questions her and consequently intimidates Carol, undermining her decision to write the letter. Carol's response is defensive - she begins to become verbally hesitant and disorientated, asking herself "Oh God, What is this? Where am I, right now?" and starts to sob. The scene is both touching and disturbing as it reinforces Carol's entrapment. Her attempt to define herself and consciously ask for help is blocked, and as a result, Carol lacks control, a voice, empowerment. Yet, while she is most often acquiescent and child-like, ironically, it is her illness that ultimately forces her to begin to assert herself and articulate her true feelings.

Carol White is an ideal example of a melodramatic figure as defined by Peter Brooks who claims that melodrama is characterised by muteness. (5) As Carol retreats from contemporary social life in the latter half of the film, searching for a safe haven at a New-age retreat, Wrenwood, she begins to make small incursions towards finding her own voice and making a place for herself in the world. But while Wrenwood is outside of Carol's familiar social environment, it is not as self-contained or hermetically sealed from social hierarchies as it initially appears to be. The director of Wrenwood, Peter Dunning/Peter Friedman, another patriarchal bourgeois figure, runs the retreat as a profit-making institution and is reluctant to suggest that Carol's illness may be a response to an oppressive social world. Although Peter and his staff stress that the outside world is full of pollution, his credo is "Heal thyself", which deflects blame back onto the individual. This attitude is the inverse of the more familiar notion that cures are found through science or medicine. The recommendation to ignore the social content of one's life is untenable and leads Carol eventually to an existence in a tiny porcelain encased tomb-like bubble hut.

What Wrenwood offers Carol is the opportunity to distance her from her familiar role and activities so that she can re-examine who she is and what she desires; and, within this context, she does manage tentatively to explore herself. Carol befriends a young male resident, Chris/James LeGros, and the experience contributes to her gradually moving toward the moment where she can look at her own image, reflected in a mirror, and say "I..love you. I really love you. I love you." (Claiming this as an independent act is qualified in that a staff member at Wrenwood, Claire/Kate McGregor Stewart, has told Carol earlier that she regained her sense of self through declarations of love to her mirror image. The moment is also qualified as Haynes has shadows partially cover Carol's face). Clearly, Haynes leaves the ending highly tenuous. Carol's tentative attempt to like herself and articulate this self-acceptance is an achievement and needs to be seen in contrast to the isolated spectre in the ski mask and body suit who haunts the Wrenwood landscape. This figure represents an extreme manifestation of someone who cannot trust and has become incapable of any interaction whatever. At the same time, Carol's attempt to express self-confidence takes place in a constricting, solitary, capsule-like space. The film concludes with a cut from Carol's shadow-covered face to black, leaving the viewer with an ambiguous ending. Haynes offers no solution but he has presented a serious critique of an emasculating culture that privileges the aggressive empowered few who exploit its potential at a great cost to the more vulnerable members of society.

In Safe, the Carol White character is the film's emotional centre and identification with her position is essential to Haynes' concerns. On the one hand, Julianne Moore gives a remarkable empathetic performance and embodies Carol White in a credible and authentic manner. While it is clear that Moore's interpretation of the character matches Haynes' conception, the relation between performance and characterization is complicated by the director's stylistics and presentation of his heroine as a victim. Haynes' visuals are highly controlled and primarily function to keep the viewer at a distance--the images are formal and carefully composed and Carol is often treated as a subject under scrutiny. This presentation tends to undercut the viewer's commitment to the character and particularly so in those scenes in which she appears to be emblematic of the ridiculous, superficial aspects of contemporary culture. These scenes can be read as encouraging the viewer to take the film as a black comedy and, to a degree, the director allows for such an interpretation; but, ultimately, Haynes produces a subtle and nuanced work that demands empathy with its heroine. If the viewer merely regards Carol as a lost bourgeois housewife who becomes hysterical over the colour of a couch, one misses both the film's pathos and its function as a bold political statement. The film's intentions extend beyond the post-modern notion of parody as an end in itself. And, while it is possible to argue that Haynes overindulges his presentation of Carol as a victim, never allowing her to escape the role during the course of the film and, hence, making it appear that victimization is what she is about, it is nevertheless important to see that his primary intention is to present a critique of a post-feminist society that remains oppressive to women.

As we have said, Safe is a film in which subject matter, characterization and style are connected in a highly concentrated manner. For instance, Haynes uses repetitive images to connect Carol's established society and Wrenwood which to an extent mirrors the world outside it. Just as the film begins with a shot taken from behind the windshield of a car, the approach to Wrenwood is presented in the exact same manner although in this instance Carol is a passenger in a taxi cab. Later, Carol is seen alone at night on the porch of her Wrenwood hut hesitantly singing to herself; the shot evokes the earlier image of Carol at night in the grounds of her San Fernando Valley home. These parallel images undercut any simple acceptance of Wrenwood as the safe haven Carol wants to think it represents. Carol may be moving towards finding a voice, but the film doesn't suggest that there is a social context where the voice can be heard. The director's vision is dark and highly guarded - a world that is full of toxins and poisons remains.

Safe belongs to a series of audacious films that re-examine women's identities in the 90s. As do the women in Thelma and Louise, The Rapture and Alien 3, Carol White, in a very literal manner, moves beyond her familiar society, and in the process, her body, like the space she inhabits, becomes increasingly unadorned. This paring down of social excess is presented as a necessary step towards self-examination. While none of these works offers its heroines life-affirming alternatives, the films' sombre conclusions can be read as a form of protest. And Thelma and Louise, in a most extravagant and celebratory fashion, defiantly suggests that driving off a cliff is preferable to life within the status quo. Todd Haynes' Safe, with its intelligent usage of the tradition of the melodrama genre, is a significant contribution to contemporary cinema, reminding the viewer that women's identity and place within the world still need to be defined and fought for.

(1) . Haynes' short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) and his first feature Poison (1991) both present the American suburbs as a bleak, life-negating environment.

(2) . See "antibodies (Larry Gross talks with Safe's Todd Haynes)" Filmmaker, Summer 1995, pp. 39-45

(3) . Michael Tolkin addresses similar concerns in The New Age (1994). For a detailed reading of The Rapture, see Florence Jacobowitz's article "The Rapture: A Woman's Film of the 90's", CineAction Issue No. 29 1992.

(4) . David Lynch's films offer a variant of the thematic of the grotesque within everyday life. As for David Cronenberg and Dead Ringers, see Florence Jacobowitz and Richard Lippe, "Dead Ringers: The Joke's on Us", CineAction Issue No. 16 May 1989.

(5) . Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976.