A masterpiece of American cinema, standing at the pinnacle of Todd Haynes' career so far and featuring a career-best performances from Julianne Moore. Cathy and Frank Whitaker (Moore and Dennis Quaid) are, to all outward appearances, the perfect couple. He the successful businessman, she the doting wife and mother; the very image of familial bliss in 50s Hartford, Connecticut. Yet beneath this facade lies a different truth. Frank is a closeted homosexual and when Cathy catches his in the arms of another man she requests that he seek medical assistance in "curing" his condition. As Frank struggles with his sexuality, Cathy also reaches crisis point. Increasingly alienated from her husband, she turns to her black gardener, Raymond Deagon (Dennis Haysbert) for friendship. The close-minded residents of Hartford are quick to judge, and Raymond's daughter Sarah is forced to bear the consequences when a group of boys knock her unconscious after taunting her about her father's "white girlfriend". Meanwhile, Frank has fallen in love with a young man he met whilst holidaying in Miami and the Whitakers divorce. After her best friend turns her back on her, Cathy returns to Raymond only to discover that he is leaving town, believing it to be in Sarah's best interests.
Haynes is clearly inspired by the films of Douglas Sirk, specifically All That Heaven Allows. The colour palette, Elmer Bernstein's score and direction all point towards 50s melodrama. By recreating the feel of these so-called "women's pictures" today, Haynes is able to bring to the surface the various sexual, social and pyschological tensions that Sirk implied but was never able to say outright. The danger with any reworking is that it can come across as a smirking pastiche, something which this most definitely is not. It's a wonderfully constructed homage to Sirk, one that is able to make explicit all of his more troubling themes.
As such, this is a movie about surfaces. Not only the surface of a person's skin, or that of a "perfect" marriage but of how we perceive ourselves and each other as individuals. Both Cathy and Frank subject themselves to similar kinds of self-dellusion, that they are in love. Frank's revelation to Cathy that he has fallen in love for the first time and that he had no idea "how that felt" is heartbreaking, not just because it exposes the lie behind their marriage but because it exposes how Cathy feels towards Raymond. The Whitakers' separation is handled with an appropriate restraint; their final conversation with each other is over the phone and concerns Cathy's carpool days. The relationship between Cathy and Raymond is similarly subtle. The audience understands their connection (on a physical, emotional and an intellectual level) without their being any need of the script spelling it out.
The performances are all top-notch. Quaid and Haysbert have perhaps been overlook, both providing stellar work here, but Julianne Moore's Cathy is so perfectly realised, both by writer/director Haynes and by the actress herself, that she pretty much overshadows everyone else here. Never once drifting into camp, it's a masterclass in composed melancholy which has drawn comparisons to her (actually very different) performance in The Hours, which was also partly set in the 50s.
This was the movie that made Haynes, one of the most prominent figures of New Queer Cinema with Safe and The Karen Carpenter Story, respectable in Hollywood. No doubt it helped him enormously in gathering together an A-list cast for I'm Not There, his experimental take on the life of Bob Dylan. This, however, is likely to be the film for which he is remembered for some time, the perfect combination of director, writer and star.
