Loin du paradis

I'm telling you, everybody's just falling in love with all the wrong people in this flick, but it's extremely captivating and the characters are perfectly engaging. I'm a bit shocked at some of your reviews here because I don't think many of you know much about the period. I do. To boot, I'm gay. Julianne Moore is excellent and deserving of the acclaim she's received for this role, as well as Quaid in the supporting role. The thing I think most people missed (or haven't made much comment on) is that both Kathleen and Frank are victims of heart-felt emotions at a time when expressing them is unthinkable. They are equally challenged by simple and earnest desires to "fill the void" in their lives: Kathleen with her giant colorblind heart in a cold society of bigots and Frank in his corporate supremacy and his "It's a different kind of love, Charlie Brown" headache. One reviewer said Frank was abusive, closeted (sure, obviously, duh) and an alcoholic. I guess if you'd ever been through that type of situation you might be a bit more forgiving because it is hell and I came from the 50s so trust. Each of these obviously well-developed characters is simply doing the best they can in a world where their ground-breaking feelings are out of place. I loved it. I own it. And I, clearly, do not advise that slim minds or socially challenged people attempt it. However, if you can watch a movie and not be a judge, if you can accept things not from your time and not about you but about very, very grand new ideas, it's an extremely well-made, well-acted and accurate film. I personally forgot we had so much orange and green furniture. And Moore is to be also commended on how well she wore those giant skirts :)

Todd Haynes' achievement in his homage to the films of Douglas Sirk is so complete, and seems so carefree that it is easy to dismiss FAR FROM HEAVEN as a trifle. The look of such ease is deceptive, however. Haynes' accomplishment, that of telling a new story through a loving recreation of the 50's weepy, is visually sumptuous and sweetly moving. The painstaking effort, from the amazingly overblown dialogue (ever so slightly exaggerated from the style of the actual 50's weepy) to the oversaturated colors and evocative score, never strains the film.

In Julianne Moore he finds the perfect heroine. Her performance is so skilled that we don't see her at work. Though nominated, Ms. Moore was sadly overlooked at the 2003 Oscars. Apparently no one could see past Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose in THE HOURS. (When a beautiful actress plays "ugly" she wins an award. Ms. Kidman's performance in THE HOURS is one of her best in that deeply moving film, but it hardly matches the subtlety and difficulty of Ms. Moore's work in FAR FROM HEAVEN.) With such breathtaking ease that we forget she is acting, Ms. Moore scales the grand challenge of using melodramatic dialogue that verges deliberately on camp to reveal the tenderness and desire of the naive 50's housewife who is the center of FAR FROM HEAVEN. (Watch her face in an early scene where she and the excellent Patricia Clarkson talk with their girlfriends about their respective marriages.)

Credit must be given to Haynes as well, who asks his cast to play it straight. Ms. Moore, who consistently achieves beauty and depth with each performance, brings this tender film to life. She has a fine counterpart in the handsome and Dennis Quaid who has not had such a plumb role since his early days.

Though every film should stand on its own, you should check out the milieu that Todd Haynes is working in – the oeuvre of Douglas Sirk being the main source – but you can also check out earlier films like DARK VICTORY and other domestic dramas.

This movie is about two main questions in American society in the fifties of last century: the homosexual question and the interracial love question. Mrs. Whitaker is the "perfect" housewife leading a "perfect" home and marital life in a small town in Connecticut. This should shape a totally happy life in the upper middle class where they belong. But suddenly she discovers that her husband is gay. Since this is considered a disease he begins to undergo a treatment with a specialist which of course doesn't work. Meanwhile and still under the shock of her discovery, Mrs. Whitaker (a beautiful lady indeed) begins to feel herself attracted by her black gardener who is a widower and a man whose education is much above the simple skill of his job. This brings both of them a lot of troubles in the prejudiced society where they live which curiously are caused not only by whites but also by blacks. The end of this all is quite foreseeable and it happens like it is expected though in a very moving way. Although this story is not very deeply told in psychological terms, it is honest, courageous and true enough to make a good movie worth to be seen.

Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid effectively inhabit their roles in "Far From Heaven," an engrossing flashback to an affluent northeastern suburb, Hartford CT in 1957-8. Quaid is Frank Whitaker, top sales exec in a company meeting the voracious needs of American consumers for the latest in gadgets and appliances. His wife, Cathy, is so much the high profile model for the typical stay-at-home, support your hubby, take care of the kids mom that she is shadowed by the local gossip reporter and her photographer. She thinks she has the perfect marriage and two terrific if not invariably best behaved kids. Both, however, are too interesting to be mistaken as a large screen resurrection of a 50s sitcom couple.

Cathy can't catch the clue when she bails Frank out of the police station and he mutters angrily about the arresting officers mistaking him for a "loiterer." A loiterer in a neat business suit with a topcoat in Hartford? Only one kind of well-dressed character like that attracted police attention in those days.

Dispensing good cheer everywhere, Cathy decides to bring dinner to her hardworking-at-night husband (no spoiler here, every media review has this part). And what should she find? Frank is in the arms of a man, kissing him actually, clothing in disarray.

Today, a presumably straight spouse or lover being gay, secretly, isn't a taboo subject. It was in Cathy and Frank's time and, in fact, no movie from that period would have touched this subject with a ten-foot boom mike. "An Affair to Remember" was risque enough.

Cathy insists Frank get help and James Rebhorn in a brief role as psychiatrist Dr. Bowman explains the most modern therapeutic approaches to "converting" Frank to exclusive heterosexuality. This was in the days when homosexuality was an official diagnosed mental illness.

In what could have been a familiar variation of the white/black awkward beginnings of friendship seen in Sidney Poitier movies but which in this instance has a refreshing originality, Cathy befriends gardener Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert). An attractive and prominent white woman being seen in public with a black man in the South at this time would have led to probably horrific repercussions. Here we get to see 1950s racist northern suburbia, people who decry Arkansas obduracy (there's a brief shot of President Eisenhower on TV announcing the despatch of the 101st Airborne Division to confront the state's mad governor at Little Rock High School) while dispensing their own venom. No guns, no lynchings, no white sheets - just an insidious degradation of blacks, reducing them to actual invisibility when convenient.

The friendship between Cathy and Raymond is at first tentative and it grows with affecting tenderness. So does the shocked anger of the wealthy gaggle in Frank and Cathy's social circle.

Is Frank cured of his "illness?" Does racial tolerance and respect for diversity seep into Hartford's tony neighborhood? Does everyone live happily ever after? Go see the film. The mid-afternoon packed audience in Manhattan's Lincoln Plaza Cinema broke into applause at the end.

Viola Davies turns in a small but critically important role as the Whitaker's maid, Sybil. Fine acting.

Director Todd Haynes allowed Moore and Quaid to make their roles real, involving, and anguished and funny in turn. Both stars deserve Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.

Rooted in the 50s in many ways, composer Elmer Bernstein turned out a good score, original rather than depending on recognizable tunes from the time. But as is so often the case, at points the score is unduly intrusive where the actors' words and expressions convey all that is necessary, music being an annoyance.

8/10.

Having grown up on the wrong side of the tracks in the fifties, I have great appreciation for this film. Mine was a small town where everyone knew everyone else's business. This is a portrait of an incredible woman. It is played with a subtle touch by Julianne Moore. She faces two of the most incredible taboos that existed at that time: homosexuality (which was a mystery to everyone) and a woman's connection to a man of a different race (though entirely innocent). This brings out the hypocrisy and hatred, forced on enlightened people by a supposedly Christian society (actually things aren't that much different in 2010). This story is as simple as it is complex. The characters reveal themselves by their silences as much as their actions. Dennis Quaid's character could be seen as a victim, but he is personally hard to swallow. Yes, he should have the right to live and be happy, but his rants and his duplicity make him rather unappetizing. People talk about the good old days. They weren't so good for a large segment of the population.