Far From Heaven (2002)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Far From Heaven (2002) – T. Haynes

Todd Haynes’ homage to the films of Douglas Sirk lovingly recreates the 1950s bourgeois milieu (where social norms and pressures to fit in and be perfect dominate) that Sirk probed in so many great films (All that Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind). However, he brings some of the subterranean conflicts and desires that Sirk only hinted at to the surface and makes them overt and this both increases the melodrama and reduces the shock that Sirk provides through a lighter touch.  But that’s not to say that the jostling surface and inner realities that Haynes portrays aren’t fascinating too.  Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid play a married couple who are models of their community … until he confronts his homosexuality and she falls in love with their Black gardener (played with great warmth by Dennis Haysbert, echoing Rock Hudson in All That Heaven Allows and with a tip of the hat to Fassbinder).  If you love Sirk, you’ll love this.