In its first half, the film follows the meaningless and superficial existence of a suburban LA housewife. Carol (Moore) unfeelingly goes through the motions of a dreary suburban existence: she goes to a baby shower, to aerobics, to the mall, enjoying just about everything contemporary America has to offer. But slowly the world of convenience and cleanliness that has ensconced her so safely (if not happily) begins to encroach on her very being—she grows physically sick at cleaners and chemicals, the very pillars of her well-ordered world. She is eventually driven to Wrenwood, a New-Age group in New Mexico full of those "allergic to the twentieth century." But Wrenwood's therapeutic lunches and general saccharin ambiance betray a similarly smug sense of an entitlement to safety. Unlike most movies, which tend to comfort and affirm the viewer in his or her convictions and habits, Safe is bent on unsettling the chronically art-house audience that Haynes knew would see his film. Intentionally monkeying with audience expectation, Haynes denies the viewer any character with whom they can easily, comfortably identify: Julianne Moore leads an American petty-bourgeois suburban existence and the New-Age groupies she joins seem often just as hollow and bleak, even duplicitous. 35mm
1995, color, 1 hour 59 minutes, USA