Todd Haynes' Safe starts off as the chronicle of the life of a bourgeois housewife from the 1980s. She seems a bit repressed by her frequently overbearing husband and her interactions with others never progress beyond rote banalities. She has no personality to speak of, in fact she seems almost incapable of acting of her own accord. Eventually she develops an illness which is so foreign to her doctor that he suggests a psychiatrist. It seems that she has grown so dissatisfied with her empty life at a subconscious level that she begins to physically manifest this dissatisfaction.
The woman begins to search for a way to overcome her new condition, or at the very least to find some way to explain it. She eventually falls in with a group of people who claim to be sick due to an inability to cope with the chemicals that the modern lifestyle has released into the environment. Her condition worsens as she heads to an isolated commune where other rich people with equally enigmatic maladies gather to convalesce. This commune is led by an incredibly wealthy man who claims to be terminally ill and explains that the only way for his clients to improve their condition is to learn to love themselves.
The film doesn't take a stance as to whether the protagonist's condition is caused by her physical environment or her lack of mental stimulation. It is critical of the society that claims to have all the answers for her, however, as everybody she encounters seems to have a plan to heal her but they succeed only in worsening her condition and decreasing the size of her living space. Haynes milks the ambiguity of the situation for his unusual narrative as his languid pace calls to mind the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, that Italian poet of ennui. Although Haynes does an adequate job technically and even manages to create some memorable images, he never manages to capture the zeitgeist the way Antonioni's best work did, nor does he combine that well worn style with any unique personal touches the way other Antonioni-influenced auteurs such as Wong Kar-Wai or Tsai Ming-liang did at around the same time. Safe manages to make its points fairly well in spite of its lack of originality and the sense of narrative bloat toward the end, making it a decent but non-essential film.
The woman begins to search for a way to overcome her new condition, or at the very least to find some way to explain it. She eventually falls in with a group of people who claim to be sick due to an inability to cope with the chemicals that the modern lifestyle has released into the environment. Her condition worsens as she heads to an isolated commune where other rich people with equally enigmatic maladies gather to convalesce. This commune is led by an incredibly wealthy man who claims to be terminally ill and explains that the only way for his clients to improve their condition is to learn to love themselves.
The film doesn't take a stance as to whether the protagonist's condition is caused by her physical environment or her lack of mental stimulation. It is critical of the society that claims to have all the answers for her, however, as everybody she encounters seems to have a plan to heal her but they succeed only in worsening her condition and decreasing the size of her living space. Haynes milks the ambiguity of the situation for his unusual narrative as his languid pace calls to mind the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, that Italian poet of ennui. Although Haynes does an adequate job technically and even manages to create some memorable images, he never manages to capture the zeitgeist the way Antonioni's best work did, nor does he combine that well worn style with any unique personal touches the way other Antonioni-influenced auteurs such as Wong Kar-Wai or Tsai Ming-liang did at around the same time. Safe manages to make its points fairly well in spite of its lack of originality and the sense of narrative bloat toward the end, making it a decent but non-essential film.