Beautifully written, directed and acted movie about a rich Los Angeles housewife going insane and blaming it on environmental toxins (sort of like the nuts nowadays who think their Teflon pans and plastic wrap are trying to kill them). Having found no doctor who can help her, Carol takes refuge in a creepy new-age cult in the desert - but instead of getting better she gets much worse.The story itself is pretty lame, but the extremely subtle and intelligent dialog, the absolutely perfect direction, editing and photography, and Julianne Moore's tight, brutal performance make it fascinating. I can understand why it won some obscure award as the best movie made during the 1990s, but it doesn't seem dated at all. I could easily believe it was released last year, and the fact that Moore has hardly aged at all in 20 years would back me up.

One of the most important figures of modern independent American cinema, Todd Haynes is widely known mostly for his music-based projects ( ''Velvet Goldmine'', ''I'm not there'', ''Superstar : the Karen Carpenter story'' and the videoclip for Sonic Youth's ''Disappearer'' ). But it's 1995's ''Safe'' that, although not related to music ( except for the amazing soundtrack ), stands out as his greatest work by far - and that is because it proves once more something that seems paradox at first glance : that the most ''anti-American'' culture that we've known so far, is the American culture itself.Carol White ( Julianne Moore in the greatest moment of her multifarious career ) is a bourgeois housewife that leads a peaceful and safe ( motif that obviously repeats itself several times throughout the film ) life with her husband and her adopted son in their luxurious house. Her daily routine is limited to aerobic classes, choosing the right color for the new sofa and having healthy meals with the rest of the good housewives - her friends. While the story unfolds she goes through some crises that look like epileptic and she starts believing more and more that its due to the effects of the environmental disaster, like the infected air she breathes in the city, or the chemical products she consumes on daily basis - and that's enough with the synopsis cause I already gave away a lot.Judging from all the above, someone would imagine that this is just a film with eco-friendly messages and indeed, this is the impression that the viewer gets around halfway through the film. Sure, the emotional emptiness of her family routine and her materialistic way of life has been made clear so far, but until then her emotional crisis doesn't seem to connect to the environmental crisis in any convincing way. The viewer is trying to connect the pieces, completely unsuspected about what's coming up next - and be sure that it's going to shake and flutter you like few other movies do.The ideology that dominates the world right now, not only in the US of course but globally, has too many aspects and the environmental crisis is only a small part of its effects in the social life - also in the film, it's going to be proved that the ecological extension is just an excuse. What really matters here is the basis upon which this ideology is build, meaning everything that feeds it and promotes on a daily basis ''from below'' : the path of individualism and family alienation from society create the need for safety from everything that threats to shake the peaceful life of the proud ''civilian'' - and that's exactly what Carol is. A low-profile, exemplary, law-abiding citizen that minds her own business and that once in a while ''breaks'' the routine by drinking tea with lemon at her friends' or trying a perm for a change. However, she's completely helpless fulfilling her need for emotional contact and, in what seems a huge step for her from what we've known so far, she decides to change her way of life drastically. Convinced that the root of all her problems is the exhaust gas of the big city, she cages herself in an even more limited environment, a strictly closed society that promises peace and serenity to her. ''We are safe, and all is well in our world'' teaches the new ''alternative'' mentor and he warns her that she is the sole responsible for everything that spoils her peace - and that is because ''she doesn't love herself too much''. Carol is willing to believe anything to find a cure, but her new cage is as deadlock as the previous one, only this time human contact is restricted by rules. The shockingly ironic last scene still haunts me every time I walk alone in the dark.

One of the greatest film I've seen for the past few years about the acceptance of oneself. I'm not sure the question is to know whether she has aids. As edorapetrafiesa perfectly said in lower discussion, she became to be allergic to the whole world. And even more to herself. I guess she couldn't stand the person her entourage asked her to become. Her lack of self confidence from a long time coming from former failed relationship (this is not her child implying that regarding her age, it's not her first husband neither) + her desire to control the least detail of her life and you have a perfect cocktail of burn out and depression. No doubt anyway this movie is about Aids and the way the illness was perceived in the eighties. A perfect mirror movie to understand why and how sometimes we locked ourselves into social plays and the consequences for those who don't master the rules (personnally I haven't :)

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.