In 1950s Connecticut, as husband Dennis Quaid comes out as gay to Julianne Moore, her friendship with her Black gardener, Dennis Haysbert, gets them in trouble with both the White and Black communities.
Fine acting, camerawork that replicates 1950s Technicolor, and a plot that is a gloss on All That Heaven Allows, neatly encapsulates this Sirk-style melodrama that director Todd Haynes and Miss Moore aimed for. Where it fails is its satire of contemporary culture. The accepted truth these days is that Amerika in the 1950s was a facade of prettiness over an ugly era, when people had jobs and hopes, making it a terrible place, when everyone was repressed. Sirk was the director whose gimlet gaze exposed the era's discontent. His techniques are worth remembering and reusing. Yet Haynes' insistence on aping everything wrong about the era makes me wonder if there was no subject in 2002 that Haynes could have been subjected to the same techniques?
I suppose not. 2002 was such a wonderful time.
Fine acting, camerawork that replicates 1950s Technicolor, and a plot that is a gloss on All That Heaven Allows, neatly encapsulates this Sirk-style melodrama that director Todd Haynes and Miss Moore aimed for. Where it fails is its satire of contemporary culture. The accepted truth these days is that Amerika in the 1950s was a facade of prettiness over an ugly era, when people had jobs and hopes, making it a terrible place, when everyone was repressed. Sirk was the director whose gimlet gaze exposed the era's discontent. His techniques are worth remembering and reusing. Yet Haynes' insistence on aping everything wrong about the era makes me wonder if there was no subject in 2002 that Haynes could have been subjected to the same techniques?
I suppose not. 2002 was such a wonderful time.