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Rating:  - Falls flat
Gets off to a great start that is eery and weird. But then it morphs into something about people who are allergic to the environment. That's when it gets very boring indeed. You keep expecting something scary to happen. It has a Stepford Wives quality that never pays off. Not worth the bother.
Rating: - Not What I Expected
As an individual who suffers from some chemical sensitivities, I purchased this movie, thinking that it was really going to be an eye-opening movie for those around me who do not smell the off-gassing carpets, particle-board furniture, or fabric softeners. Instead, I found a movie that begins with a woman who suddenly becomes environmentally ill, but ends with her entering a "safe haven," do nothing for her community instead of a true environmental clinic that would actually assist her in improving her health. I was very disappointed in the movie. And, yes, there are some of us who have been over-exposed to some chemicals that truly become environmentally sensitive!
Rating:  - Some recoil from pine-scented cleaning power
I had seen this movie a few years ago and really liked it, so I was eager to watch it again at some point and get it up on this site. At that time I was going to gather a themed collection of horror movies that aren't really horror movies, but that idea fell away and now I can't remember what any of the other movies in it might have been.
We open with these credits as we see the driver's POV of a car moving through a subdivision at night. This is the San Fernando Valley of 1987. Then we see Julianne Moore as Carol, having sex with her husband. She is clearly not interested, but she's good, the way she goes through the motions of periodically rubbing his back and giving him a little kiss after he's done. She goes to aerobics class, and afterward her friends observe that she doesn't sweat.
Carol is expecting a new couch to be delivered. She comes home to receive a call from her mother [Carol: "He's fine. She's fine. They're fine. I will. I will, mother."], then turns to see that the couch has come, and it's black. It's black and she ordered teal! This is the start of all Carol's problems, and this time, it hit all too close to home for me: I'M expecting a couch to be delivered in a few days! Would mine, too, prove to be an ominous omen of lingering ill reproach?
By this time you will have noticed that there is always some sort of TV or radio on in the background. Carol's discovery of the couch is hilariously set to "Turn Your Love Around," and we hear many other examples of the banal media that surrounds us. Her maids gossip in Spanish and ignore Carol's calls. Carol returns to the store and is informed that the order states she wanted black. "Well that's impossible," she says, "because it doesn't go with anything we have." Afterward, she is driving behind a truck that does not seem to be meeting state and federal emissions regulations. She starts coughing uncontrollably, and pulls into a parking garage, driving through the anonymous space as she hacks and wheezes. It's creepy and scary.
SPOILERS > > >
We cut from a line of cars on the freeway to a shot of the planet Earth--I love thematically obvious stuff like this. Then her son reads his school report at dinner, about street gangs, with special emphasis on murders, shootings, stabbings, dismemberment.... Then Carol gets a perm--and a nosebleed. Around this time one has begun to notice the large amount of shots set near windows with cars passing by outside. Her husband finds that Carol no longer wants to have sex. He holds her--and she pukes!
One day she finds a flyer in the supermarket saying "Are you allergic to the 20th century?" which informs her about people who are environmentally sensitive. She goes to her doctor, but he can't find anything wrong with her. She has another attack at a baby or wedding shower, and tells her husband that she's become allergic to all the chemicals that pervade our environment. "So you think you've been sick because of... bug spray?" he asks.
It goes on. Eventually Carol builds 'safe' room in her house, and soon after takes off for Rainwood, this retreat for chemically-sensitive people, where she meets a featured patient played by Jessica Harper of Suspiria and Phantom of the Paradise. She also meets guru Peter, who one patient says is environmentally sensitive AND has AIDS, so "his perspective is incredibly vast." Depending on your point of view, she either finds understanding at last or goes completely off the deep end.
< < < SPOILERS END
As a conversation piece, it brings up a great deal, chief among which is whether this illness is real at all, or just psychosomatic. When I watched this the first time, I thought it was quite obvious that it was psychosomatic, but now I think the movie is fairly open about how it could be interpreted, and in many ways isn't really about environmental illness at all. There are many who interpret it to be about AIDS, but I think it's mostly about disaffection from the modern world [making it a great double-feature with Ghost World], with the title being ironic; can we ever really be safe? What does it mean to be safe? Most of the chemicals in the products we use are at 'safe' levels. We are clearly shown that Carol doesn't enjoy sex with her husband, but what's interesting about the movie, leaving it open to interpretation, is that although the rest of Carol's life seems boring and banal to US, with the constant talk radio and insipid music [not that "Turn Your Love Around" is insipid... well, okay, but not that that's a problem], and aerobics classes and showers and fruit diets, we don't necessarily get much evidence that it's banal to HER. That is to say, her life in incredibly empty, but we don't know for sure if she finds it empty, or we're just projecting onto her.
Now I have "Turn Your Love Around" in my head.
Part of what made me feel this way was an article in New York Magazine about parents with chemical sensitivities, and it mentioned that those people consider this movie their statement. I was like; "WHAT?! It's an obvious satire!" but upon review, maybe it's not that obvious. So who knows. Regardless, you might find this Wiki page on MCS, or Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, fascinating, as I did. In it we find that doctors can still find no evidence of a physical basis for their symptoms, and that MCS correlates strongly with depression...
Since I watched the movie, I read the essay the writer / director wrote for the DVD booklet, and learned, somewhat to my disappointment, that he does in fact believe in environmental illness, and was making this completely clear and straightforward movie about it. He also explicitly states that he also saw it as a parallel to the AIDS crisis. So, shows what the I know, though I consider it a strength that the movie can be interpreted in multiple ways. By the way, this movie shares an odd number of elements with The Incredible Shrinking Woman. In that film, Lily Tomlin begins shrinking because of all the chemicals in her environment, and there is a similar scene of her trapped in a car with an aerosol chemical, and coughing terribly.
But, as a movie? Definitely interesting, but perhaps it leaves a bit to be desired in the storytelling department. This is more of a statement than a drama. Carol has an attack! Then she has a worse attack! Then a WORSE attack! That's about the structure of the screenplay, and while I found it very compelling the first time, in retrospect I think maybe that was just the novelty of the concept. This time--there just isn't much of a story here. The movie is still quite different and worth watching, it's just less of a complete story and structured film than I hoped it would be. It's kind of more of a conversation piece than anything.
Rating:  - Safe
This isn't a movie where the heroine struggles against all odds to triumph over her illness as the audience learns facts about it. It's a bleak look at how society fails those who are different or have a problem, then tells them it's their own fault and if they would just do some positive thinking then they'll be fine.
Carol's illness is real, and serves as a metaphor for her alienation from society. Our modern world makes her sick on many levels, but no-one will help her, only blame her. I don't think the movie is as ambiguous as some claim: it's clear that we're meant to sympathise with Carol, and not with her bored husband, uncaring doctor, and greedy self-help guru. If we admit that Carol is really sick, then what does that say about the world we live in?
Kubrick fans won't mind the slow pace; fans of dark satire will enjoy Hayne's harsh take on modern life and self-help cults.
Rating:  - I have the illness and I still didn't like the film!
I am a sufferer of multiple food and chemical sensitivities, to the point where I can barely go out into the real world myself and am forced to live a life that most people would find weird to the extreme, avoiding just about everything. That was why I decided to watch this movie. I thought that it was about time someone made a movie about the illness, which is a very real and serious disease. So I sat down to watch the film with an open, receptive mind, ready to be dazzled.
I could not have been more disappointed. This movie was a steaming heap of garbage. The scriptwriter clearly did not understand the illness...that was glaringly obvious. Just as annoyingly, I don't think he knew how to write a decent movie script. It was slow and annoying, and don't expect to feel any empathy for the characters, even the sick ones. I kept waiting for the main character to wake up to just how insane the health cult she joined was, but she never did. I mean, telling people they were sick because they wanted to be? Please, how stupid would you have to be to believe something like that?
This is a real illness, and a serious one. Immune system disorders are on the rise in society. More people are suffering allergy and asthma and diseases of the immune system than ever before. It's a medical fact, and one that needs a lot more attention than it's getting. But I would rather it got no attention at all than to have cruddy movies like this made about it!
There is a good reason this movie didn't rake it in at the box office...it's not to do with the fact that it's about an illness; I mean, movies like 'Awakenings' and 'Lorenzo's Oil', not to mention all those movies about people dying of cancer, and the numerous tv shows set in hospitals and medical practices, prove that medical stories are actually box office and tv gold if they're handled in the right way by decent scriptwriters. But this film is just so DULL and idiotic and poorly written and badly filmed...you would have to pay me a LOT of money to sit through watching this again!
This movie may have some limited appeal to people who know NOTHING about the disease it's supposed to be about. Voyeurs, the uninformed, posers who like 'alternative' movies no matter how bad they are, and people who like watching freak shows may find an interest in the film. But for anyone who likes fast paced, well written entertainment, or who wants to learn about the FACTS of this disease and its true and devastating impact on the way its sufferers live, then I would suggest looking elsewhere.
If you want to know more about the illness, I suggest watching two exceptional Australian documentaries, 'Canary in the Mine' and 'The Final Insult'. They're difficult to get hold of, but well worth seeing.
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