Far from Heaven (2002)
Country: US/FR
Technical: CFI/107m
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson
Synopsis:
Connecticut, the 1950s. Mrs Whitaker is a pillar of her small town, immensely proud of her company exec. husband, until her world is shattered from without and within: by her husband's struggle with his innate homosexuality and by the town's hostility towards her friendship with their coloured gardener.
Review:
An ineffably subtle piece of work which at once draws stylistic inspiration from the Sirk melodramas of that decade (even beginning in identical fashion) and then gradually unpicks the moral attitudes and hypocrisies implicit in them. Cinematography (vivid autumnal colours to the fore), music by Elmer Bernstein, discreet performances which again evoke the era and transcend it, and direction which never pushes the issues to the fore in a preachy way, all conspire to make this one of the films of the year.
Country: US/FR
Technical: CFI/107m
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson
Synopsis:
Connecticut, the 1950s. Mrs Whitaker is a pillar of her small town, immensely proud of her company exec. husband, until her world is shattered from without and within: by her husband's struggle with his innate homosexuality and by the town's hostility towards her friendship with their coloured gardener.
Review:
An ineffably subtle piece of work which at once draws stylistic inspiration from the Sirk melodramas of that decade (even beginning in identical fashion) and then gradually unpicks the moral attitudes and hypocrisies implicit in them. Cinematography (vivid autumnal colours to the fore), music by Elmer Bernstein, discreet performances which again evoke the era and transcend it, and direction which never pushes the issues to the fore in a preachy way, all conspire to make this one of the films of the year.
Country: US/FR
Technical: CFI/107m
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson
Synopsis:
Connecticut, the 1950s. Mrs Whitaker is a pillar of her small town, immensely proud of her company exec. husband, until her world is shattered from without and within: by her husband's struggle with his innate homosexuality and by the town's hostility towards her friendship with their coloured gardener.
Review:
An ineffably subtle piece of work which at once draws stylistic inspiration from the Sirk melodramas of that decade (even beginning in identical fashion) and then gradually unpicks the moral attitudes and hypocrisies implicit in them. Cinematography (vivid autumnal colours to the fore), music by Elmer Bernstein, discreet performances which again evoke the era and transcend it, and direction which never pushes the issues to the fore in a preachy way, all conspire to make this one of the films of the year.