Safe(Filmmaker in Focus Series All Those Magnificent Obsessions Allow: The Cinema of Todd Haynes)

The wealthy wife Carol White (Julianne Moore) is feeling sick. The doctor does not see anything wrong with her. Carol’s husband believes it is a female mood disorder. Carol’s condition is getting worse. She sees the notice of a New Age healing group and realizes that she needs to stay away from the chemicals in the urban environment and go to a health retreat in the desert. Set in 1987, Safe shows how Carol has lost her sense of identity and is imprisoned in the affluent and clean space of material pursuit and domestic safety. The film has been read as an allegory of AIDS, revealing how the sense of safety based on medicine, health, family, and wealth can collapse at any moment.

*Post-screening discussion on 21 Oct 2017