By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * *)
Connecticut, Middle America, in the middle 50s. Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) has the American dream. Her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) is a success, her kids love her, she lives in a beautiful house and is a star of her smalltown society. Until
Cathy stumbles across Frank in a compromising situation one night and realises he is gay. She seeks comfort with the family's gardener, Raymond (Dennis Haysbert), but that represents the other taboo: he is black.
Todd Haynes, the director who has previously ventured into celebrity (the Ziggy Stardusty Velvet Goldmine, Rimbaud, Karen Carpenter; his next subject is Dylan), once again tackles society's issues and pre-judices in a film that has echoes of his earlier Safe.
In that, Moore played a modern Californian housewife with an apparently perfect life whose environment turned against her: she became sicker and more withdrawn as she feared the effects of her hairspray, exhaust fumes, and ultimately her husband and the world around her.
Now Haynes is attacking America and its society that fears the unknown. He might have set it in the 50s, he might use the worries of the time (homophobia, racism, anti-communism), he might use the trick of borrowing from the Technicolor look of a half-century ago, but it doesn't require much effort to read between the lines.
Moore and Quaid give him marvellous performances, especially when Quaid, as the tortured husband, takes treatment "to cure himself of his homosexuality" and faces the truth on a second honeymoon in Miami.
The pair received a slew of nominations for their work; significantly, major wins came in Vancouver, Toronto, Venice rather than in Hollywood or New York. One of the films of the year.
DVD features: movie (96min); commentary by Haynes; 3 features: Anatomy of a Scene, Making Of ... , A Filmmaker's Experience with Moore and Haynes.
