This is the question Safe ponders over its two hours. Julianne Moore plays a disillusioned young housewife who starts to slowly develop allergy after allergy, until she is effectively unable to co-exist with the busy city environment around her. As a result she embarks on a journey both physical and spiritual to come to terms with her crippling allergies.

Right. Plot synopsis out of the way, how does Safe work? Pretty well actually. I don't necessarily agree with the popular summary that Safe is a 'horror movie for the soul' as there's much more to it than that, the summary suggests it's like Ring with allergies, which is selling it short at best. Safe is basically a human drama about someone who has to deal with strange and extreme circumstances, and decides to take equally strange and extreme measures. Via this, director Todd Haynes is able to both examine and partially satirise middle-America's values and accepted environment, and the self-help/new medicine craze of recent years.

He does this with care and emotion, taking a good hard look at Moore's character and the things she surrounds herself with. Moore's character is both obviously unhappy but also too timid to say anything herself, so the allergies seem almost like an internal rebellion from her body, and her journey away from the city an escape for both body and soul. It's a fairly deep movie, and it's nice to see something that grapples with society at large and actually tries to say something as opposed to a movie that seems firmly entertainment.

That said, you need some entertainment. If Safe has a weakness, it is its focus. There is almost no external detail to Moore's life, with even her family painted in giant broad brushstrokes. As a result the movie is a singularly lonely experience although I feel in part this is intentional. It is also a somewhat long film. 2 hours isn't a lot in this age of three-hour blockbusters, but most three hour blockbusters have casts you can't count on your fingers and toes, whereas I'd say a good 75% of screen time is concentrated on Moore and Moore alone. It's an intense, quiet 2 hours and you really feel tired and lonely afterwards.

Thankfully, Moore is both sympathetic and likable, and you want her to do what she feels is right as much as possible. Also, the film's focus on her character enables Haynes to do certain parts of the film in an almost first person fashion. Certain sequences so accurately portray the experience of being really ill that you almost feel ill yourself, and the movie is an artistic triumph, with every shot looking absolutely spot on.

So, I recommend Safe. It's a well-shot, terrifically acted movie, with a genuinely original feel and premise, but be warned that it is a long movie, and one with very few light-hearted moments or external characters.

Safe is perhaps a tad too ambiguous for its own good. The film focuses on a suburban housewife (Julianne Moore) who feels sick for no reason. Her doctor suggests psychological treatment, but she finds more comfort in the idea that her sickness is caused by environmental factors, such as car fumes and the like. Haynes never answers the question of what is really affecting Moore. One moment you're sure it's psychological, then physical symptoms displayed by the woman are undeniable. It's not that I really wanted the questions answered, but the constant toying with the audience does become a strain, especially as the film runs for two hours and not much happens. There's also the possibility that the story isn't meant to represent reality, but instead it might be allegorical. This makes it all the more difficult to unravel. I know I sound sort of negative in this review, but I did like it. I don't think it works completely, but I found it fascinating. One reason it does work at all is that Haynes' major goal seems to want to put us inside Moore's head. It shows us what it would be like to suffer and not know why, and how comfortable it might be to, say, join a cult, which is basically what she does in the end. Not entirely satisfying, but definitely well worth a look.

Over the past 20-25 years, Todd Haynes has been a leading figure in New Queer Cinema. A common motif in his movies is a housewife who sees her seemingly ideal lifestyle collapse. He explored this topic in 2002's "Far from Heaven" and 2015's "Carol", but his first look at it was in 1995's "Safe".

Carol White (Julianne Moore) is the typical yuppie housewife in 1980s southern California. She spends her days attending aerobics classes, having empty conversations with her acquaintances, and obsessing on her furniture (she even wears high heels at dinner). But things aren't perfect in Carol's life. Early in the movie, she and her husband have sex, but she doesn't enjoy it. It gets identified that she married into the family, meaning that she's not truly part of it, or the world that they inhabit. And then, she starts suffering an unexplained reaction to her surroundings.

A special feature on the DVD is a conversation between Haynes and Moore. They note that it's not really important what Carol's medical condition is. The important thing is that it wakes her up to the falsity of her lifestyle and the problems lurking beneath the surface. In a way, her stepson is more attuned to things: he writes a paper graphically describing the myriad crimes taking place in the LA area. The New Age retreat that Carol attends in the desert seems like the sort of place that has a solution, but even it presents problems.

The LGBT community apparently protested the depiction of the AIDS-afflicted person in the retreat. As producer Christine Vachon noted in an interview, there's no "right" way to depict that type of character. The point is that by the end of the movie, Carol is making an effort to accept her true self, unrelated to the materialism of her suburban existence.

All in all, I wouldn't call the movie a full masterpiece, but it's a fine addition to the genre of suburban gothic (the same genre into which movies like "American Beauty" fit). I recommend it.