Far from Heaven ***** (2002, Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert) – Classic Movie Review 1532

Writer-director Todd Haynes’s 2002 masterwork drama profitably reunites him with the star of his 1995 movie Safe, Julianne Moore.

She plays Cathy, a Fifties New England housewife who finds that her perfect husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) is a closet gay when one night she surprises him kissing another man. Confusion mixes with grief as Cathy’s world is rocked. She takes up with her African-American gardener Raymond (Dennis Haysbert), and sets the local Connecticut gossip-mongers’ tongues wagging overtime over the socially taboo relationship. Despite Cathy and Frank’s struggle to keep their marriage afloat, reality and maybe some honesty kick in.

Oscar-nominated Moore is stunning in this brilliant, beautifully stylish movie, exquisitely made in homage to the plush, Douglas Sirk-style melodramas of the day, but showing the reined-in passionate underbelly of the Fifties Eisenhower era realistically.

Patricia Clarkson, Ryan Ward, Lindsay Andretta, Viola Davis, James Rebhorn and Celia Weston are also in the cast.

Safe took Haynes, the director of Poison in 1991, away from his roots in the New Queer Cinema. He went on to Velvet Goldmine in 1998 and I’m Not There in 2007.

http://derekwinnert.com/safe-1995-julianne-moore-classic-movie-review-1530

http://derekwinnert.com/poison-1991-dir-todd-haynes-classic-movie-review-1528/

http://derekwinnert.com/velvet-goldmine-1998-jonathan-rhys-meyers-ewan-mcgregor-classic-movie-review-1529/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1532

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