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FAR FROM HEAVEN is writer-director Todd Haynes’s aesthetically gorgeous and genteel emulation of the 1950s so-called woman’s picture, with a major difference in frankness. Julianne Moore’s Cathy Whitaker is an affluent mother of two in 1957 suburban Hartford who seems to have everything. But, as the title suggests, this is not paradise.
Haynes is a creative independent, working finally with a decent $14 million budget. He explores in the stylish 1950s melodrama mode what could not be explored then, but he does it with that era’s subtle taste.
Cathy is a paragon in family and community a virtual saint. The local society paper describes her as “a woman as devoted to her children as she is kind to negroes.”
This classic heroine discovers that her husband (Dennis Quaid), a top sales executive, is a homosexual. Cathy becomes drawn to the companionship of Raymond (Dennis Haysbert), her young and kind African-American gardener. They slowly fall in love as gossipy tongues wag.
An homage to stylish director Douglas Sirk, Far is a reworking of his All That Heaven Allows (1955), in which (to show how times change), heroine Jane Wyman was a widow, and the gardener (sweet irony, Rock Hudson) was only too young and too blue-collar.
The triumph of Haynes and his actors is their success in doing the new story straight and so much to-the-heart that only a rock would not be moved. A sad story, elegantly told, with moral irony and insight; recommended for mature viewers.
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