THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS
Writer/director Rose Troche (Bedrooms and Hallways, Six Feet Under-TV) assembles an ensemble cast and with the help of AM Homes' stories, has an entertaining and far-reaching look into suburbia. It lacks the darkness of both Happiness and Storytelling, yet paints a more optimistic, more 'maternal' picture.
Safety opens with an exquisite installation that features little mechanised people coming in and out of their white houses. Glenn Close is the tireless "professional mom" Esther Gold who has been caring for her comatose son Paul (Joshua Jackson, of Dawson's Creek fame). Then there's the Train family, where lawyer father Jim (Dermot Mulroney) experiences a midlife crisis. The Christiansons and Jennningses have their own sets of problems.
As the story moves on, we find that these families are threaded together by various events. The most cinematically interesting would have to be the car competition in the middle of a mall, where Esther hopes to win over her daughter. Another quirky aspect, which I teased out with Rose during our telephone interview, was a pubescent boy's preoccupation with a Barbie-like doll. With the help of a Toronto model maker, Rose was able to 'sex her up' by making her move. As Mattel owns the dimensions of Barbie, Rose made her doll taller, with a bigger bust and so forth. When asked what she had wished to include but was not able to, she replied that she had intended to show us the metaphoric image of Esther reaching into herself and restarting her heart. They did not have enough money for this, unfortunately.
The plot is neatly resolved at the end, in one cathartic, heart-breaking event which has political relevance for Australia today. For some, such tying-up of narrative turns reeks of contrivance and detracts from their viewing pleasure. My reaction to Troche's film was that I missed the acid humour that the previously mentioned films-or even American Beauty-can bring. She has cut down ironic distance and immersed herself in these people, because, as she told me, she believes we're all suburban, and those of us who flee to the city are taking the coward's way out.
Here we have a filmmaker who researches thoroughly (she has 300 pages of notes on her next project, a continuation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, an author and book she finds fascinating) plus she writes her first draft in long hand. Her advice to any budding screenwriter is not to let anyone see the first draft. Ideally, no one should see anything below the third draft. This film is fun, not too long and has some important things to say. Amongst its many characters, surely one of them is like one of us.
Andrew Staker
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