Loin du paradis

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.

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.

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 is an acquired taste but nobody can deny his gifted approach to filmmaking. Far from heaven is an interesting film starring Julianne Moore and with a look that evokes the films of the 50s. Everything about Far from Heaven playfully yet reverently alludes to the 1950s as a movie genre. The rich and digitally enhanced autumn leaves feature as tableaux, and as a discreet and tasteful design for the opening and closing credits. Elmer Bernstein's score imitates the lush foliage with its extravagantly emotional strings, later arranged with much emphasis on brooding keyboard and woodwind, dotting and crossing the drama's every "i" and "t". Mark Friedberg's production design is outstanding, surpassing his period work on Pollock and The Ice Storm. Sandy Powell's costumes are superb, especially for Moore herself who is allowed noticeably fuller skirts as the queen bee of her daiquiri-sipping ladies' circle, and some truly show stopping elbow-length gloves for a party scene.

Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven, a homage to the 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk, is an exquisitely crafted film of beauty and grace. The world that Haynes creates is so meticulously detailed that one almost forgets that the movie isn't fifty years old.

Julianne Moore deserves an Academy Award for her portrayal of Cathy Whitaker, a homemaker whose idyllic life begins to disintegrate when she learns that her husband is gay. Moore's Cathy is a delicate woman who would like to be courageous, but can't be because of the world that she is trapped in. As her innocence begins to die, she realizes how empty and superficial her life is. When she begins a cautious romance with her black gardener (Dennis Haysbert) she begins to see the racism and hypocrisy that forms the underbelly of a seemingly perfect world. At the end of the film Cathy has no illusions, and realizes that the life that she thought was perfect is actually a never-ending hell.

Dennis Quaid is equally stunning as Cathy's tortured husband Frank. After Cathy discovers his homosexuality, the two are forced to grapple with a truth that neither of them can comprehend. Frank goes to a doctor for "treatment," and his confession is heartbreaking. He says that he "can't let this thing, this sickness, destroy my life. I'm going to beat this thing." We look at Frank and pity him because we realize that such a feat is impossible, and unnecessary, but Frank does not possess that knowledge. Frank begins to drink more, and when he finally breaks down and tells Cathy that he has fallen in love with another man, all of the anger, shame, and joy comes pouring out of him all at once. It is a supremely moving moment, and the best performance of Quaid has ever given.

As the marriage between Cathy and Frank begins to unravel, the two also begin to fight. All of Cathy and Frank's arguments and confessions take place at night, bathed in shadows. The truth has no place in this bright, artificial world, and it must stay hidden at all costs. One night, when Frank tries to make love to Cathy and can't, Cathy tries to placate him, saying that he is "all man" to her. At that remark Frank hits her, and for a moment the audience does not breathe. Cathy then asks quietly for her husband to get her some ice. Cathy is all restraints, and it is only with her kind gardener that she has a chance to break free. The scenes between Moore and Haysbert crackle with erotic energy because everything remains unsaid. When Cathy finally asks him to dance with her, it is a moment when we realize what human beings are capable of being together.

The fourth example of stellar acting comes from Patricia Clarkson as Cathy's best friend Eleanor. Eleanor is a bitter, gossipy, cold-hearted woman, and when she tells Cathy "I am your best friend," you want to scream to Cathy not to believe her. Clarkson makes the most of her rather limited screen time, and turns in a fascinatingly layered performance.

Far From Heaven may very well be the best picture of the year. In creating an artificial world, Todd Haynes has managed to lay bare the human soul in a way that has never been done before. It is a moving and important motion picture, populated with some of the most nuanced acting I have ever seen. Cathy and Frank Whitiker may be far from heaven, but the film comes about as close to heaven as is possible.