Artist's Choice Screening: Safe

Selected by Daisy LaFarge as her Artist's Choice Screening for We Contain Multitudes 

Todd Haynes’ 1995 psychodrama starring Julianne Moore is a disquieting critique of stifling suburban conformity, and a confronting and uncompromising portrait of a woman whose life and health fall apart before our eyes. Julianne Moore’s performance is one among a career of excellent performances, and it is the centre of the film without which the rest simply wouldn’t work.

Moore plays Carol White, a housewife in affluent 1980s California. Carol becomes afflicted by a mysterious illness that nobody can identify, and as her condition worsens with no cure in sight, she becomes more isolated.

Haynes said in a 1996 interview that all of his films up to that point were in some ways responses to Aids, “though none of my films are specifically about Aids”, and modern audiences found striking contemporary relevance to the film in the age of COVID. 

Shot for only $1 million in around a month, it is an extremely impressive entry from one of contemporary America’s most exacting directors.