Made in the mid-‘90s, having gestated since the beginning of the decade (by which I mean, they couldn’t raise the money to actually make it), Todd Haynes’ psychological horror oddity, Safe, is set in 1987, putting it in the fairly small category of movies that are period pieces wherein the period is essentially ‘yesterday’. It’s certainly one way to get around having your film date. The late ‘80s setting is very important however. Let’s look at the thing and see if you can guess why.

In the L.A. suburbs, vacuous corporate housewife Carol White (Julianne Moore) lives her life free from care beyond making sure the décor matches, planning parties, and making herself look nice for when her husband come home or she’s going to attend social functions. One day, she falls ill unexpectedly, with coughing fits and nausea and headaches and vomiting and unexplained bleeding from her face holes. It’s all very inconsiderate and annoying for other people and she should really just stop it. Doctors unable to find anything to help, so it’s up to her to figure out what’s going on and how to deal.

I’m sure you’ve figured it out. What horrific illness was surfaced in the 1980s and destroyed countless lives as governments and an apathetic public looked on because it largely seemingly only affected those deemed undesirable? That’s right, neoliberalism. But you know what other horrific illness was surfaced in the 1980s and destroyed countless lives as governments and an apathetic public looked on because it largely seemingly only affected those deemed undesirable? That’s right, AIDS. Carol’s baffling mystery illness is very much a stand in for AIDS. That’s not to say it is meant to literally be AIDS; the disease is explicitly mentioned as existing in the world of Safe and it’s fairly clear about the fact what she’s got isn’t that, despite conveniently sharing a bunch of symptoms. And overall, it’s probably misleading to simply say it’s a metaphor for AIDS, as it seems like its oversimplifying what’s going on in the film. For what it’s worth, in interviews (spoilers, obviously), Haynes, while acknowledging the metaphor is intentional, just describes what Carol seemingly suffers from as ‘environmental illness’, which is an alleged condition wherein people are especially sensitive to chemicals commonly used in day to day life resulting in symptoms that Wikipedia cheerfully describes as “vague and non-specific”. Whether it’s physical or psychological however, it would seem that the people ‘with’ it do actually suffer ill health as a result of something. Indeed, the film doesn’t care to specify whether which Carol’s malady is and ultimately it doesn’t really matter, does it? The reaction is what’s important, opening up the film into an examination of the ‘female malady’. The film very deliberately makes reference to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (1892), though the scenario is inverted; while Gilman’s protagonist is locked away and desperate to get out, with people insisting she’s ill despite evidence to the contrary, people perceive Carol as ultimately being fine despite appearances and as a result she’s thrust into a wider world that she longs to escape from and return to her life of domesticity. The film’s tragedy is that she goes on a journey that allows her to question everything she knows and grow as a person, but she ultimately rejects it all for a return to a rigidly structured existence where she’s infantilised and nigh incapable of doing anything by or for herself.

Aim is very much taken as well at general attitudes towards health. While her peers are vaguely sympathetic but largely disinterested, Carol’s journey inevitably leads her into the mire of self-help shenanigans and a major target of the film’s ire; the idea that the onus of recovery is the patient’s alone. The self-help retreat is nigh indistinguishable from a cult, complete with a charismatic founder who has at his disposal a variety of platitudes and motivational speeches that serve to reinforce in his charges the idea that their illnesses are entirely their own fault. They eat it up eagerly. He is proof that his techniques work; he said so. Ignore the evidence to the contrary. Also, that he lives in a big house on a wooded hill overlooking the retreat, a dusty valley comprised of cabins and prefabs. Don’t mind that at all. He’s definitely not getting rich off the vulnerable and desperate.

(In the land of probably-reading-too-much-into-stuff, amongst the people at the retreat is one played by Jessica Harper, best known as Suzy from Suspiria (1977) (she also has a supporting role in the 2018 film, but that’s not really relevant to where I’m going with this), which is another film with a penchant for cults and female illness. Coincidence? I dunno, probably.)

The film’s take on all this is done in an unusual manner. Reflecting the heroine’s detachment and hollow life, the film puts forth a rather extreme aesthetic, with sterile interiors and parched exteriors. To be fair, the latter might be somewhat incidental; Haynes posits in the same interview that that’s basically just how Southern California looks and he was surprised when he first went elsewhere and saw colours of plants and that a lot more vividly. These hues are based around the geographical area’s atmosphere, natural or otherwise; while, in reality, much of the colouring is based around the trajectory of light entering the atmosphere, the more yellowy hues of the outside world put forth a sickly image which serves to suggest that something is not quite right. Also remember that L.A. is quite infamous for its levels of pollution. Anyway, the world of Safe itself is sick and rather clinical, which is reflected in its population; Carol is surrounded by people who exist at a distance. They’re not unfriendly per se, but they keep each other at arm’s length and have strict ideas of what society expects of them, seeming thusly cold and detached. This includes not just the general social circle, but Carol’s best friend and even her husband, who is somewhat disdainful of his wife’s inability to uphold her end of their social contract. This results in a view of upper middle-class American suburbia that emanates a low-key dread even before the heroine’s descent into illness, reminiscent of a David Lynch film. It should be noted that Carol herself isn’t immune however; she is just a guilty of this detachment as everyone else. It’s only when she falls ill does she have to reflect.

As I write this, there’s news of the second person to be cleared of HIV. This actually happened a while ago, but the person in question made himself public rather than existing as an anonymous patient, giving what happened a face and a name (it’s ‘Adam Castillejo’, in case you wanted to look it up). The apparent ‘cure’, as I understand it, doesn’t really seem practical for a pandemic of such proportions however. To this end, we perhaps haven’t progressed as far as headlines might make one think (or would if they weren’t being buried by stories on the ongoing-at-time-of-writing Coronavirus outbreak), but it seems like there’s hope for the future. I ponder if the AIDS metaphor of the film might be lost on future generations. Hell, I’m too young to remember the height of the crisis. That said, the film still plays powerfully, even without active experience of those times. Perhaps the metaphorical aspect allows for sufficient ambiguity to have the film maintain its sense of dread. Certainly, the environmental concerns the film puts forth haven’t really gone away, and may have gotten worse. Safe does not provide answers. Twenty-five years on, we still have the same bubblegum crisis.