jm10701
Beautifully written, directed and acted movie about a rich Los Angeles housewife going insane and blaming it on environmental toxins (sort of like the nuts nowadays who think their Teflon pans and plastic wrap are trying to kill them). Having found no doctor who can help her, Carol takes refuge in a creepy new-age cult in the desert - but instead of getting better she gets much worse.The story itself is pretty lame, but the extremely subtle and intelligent dialog, the absolutely perfect direction, editing and photography, and Julianne Moore's tight, brutal performance make it fascinating. I can understand why it won some obscure award as the best movie made during the 1990s, but it doesn't seem dated at all. I could easily believe it was released last year, and the fact that Moore has hardly aged at all in 20 years would back me up.
SnoopyStyle
Carol White (Julianne Moore) is a wealthy housewife living an empty life in an affluent California suburb where the wrong colored couch being delivered is so very important. She's married to Greg (Xander Berkeley) with a stepson. She starts to suffer headaches. Her sickness gets more and more serious. People have differing opinions. The movie seems to indicate the everyday modern toxins. Her doctor (Steven Gilborn) sends her to a psychiatrist. An allergist finds that milk which she drinks constantly is a big trigger for her. She picks up a flyer from the community bulletin board and joins a group that blames it on modern chemicals. Peter Dunning (Peter Friedman) leads a chemical sensitive group living out in the middle of nowhere called Wrenwood.There is an overall haunting emptiness in the film. I do wonder what Todd Haynes is trying to say with this movie. It is Julianne Moore that keeps me intrigued. One thing that I didn't like is that Wrenwood has too many artificial things. It doesn't fit the concept. Also "Does that makes sense?" started to really annoyed me. I want the movie to do something but it somewhat peters out. It's more of a spiritual emptiness and a horror of the soul. I feel the same way about Wrenwood as the movie. Wrenwood is a bit cultish but it's not really hurting anyone. The movie is a bit odd but there's nothing obviously bad about it.
Red_Identity
Seems like Todd Haynes is definitely a director with a certain skill for visualizing and really executing certain themes and ideas in ways that, if not entirely original, are surely very unique in their presentation. This film, like many have said, could really stand for a lot of different things (AIDS being the most obvious one) but it's definitely concerned with those types of ambiguities and metaphors that serve another type of resonance. The acting is fantastic, Moore actually giving one of the best performances from her entire career (shame it's such an underrated/underseen flick because I could see it having been a lot more popular). The film as a whole is very well developed.
Wild Wander
One of the greatest film I've seen for the past few years about the acceptance of oneself. I'm not sure the question is to know whether she has aids. As edorapetrafiesa perfectly said in lower discussion, she became to be allergic to the whole world. And even more to herself. I guess she couldn't stand the person her entourage asked her to become. Her lack of self confidence from a long time coming from former failed relationship (this is not her child implying that regarding her age, it's not her first husband neither) + her desire to control the least detail of her life and you have a perfect cocktail of burn out and depression. No doubt anyway this movie is about Aids and the way the illness was perceived in the eighties. A perfect mirror movie to understand why and how sometimes we locked ourselves into social plays and the consequences for those who don't master the rules (personnally I haven't :)
AD
