December 2, 2023 | Rome, Italy

Far From Heaven

By |2018-03-21T18:21:25+01:00July 9th, 2004|Reviews|

3

Date: 2002

Director: Todd Haynes

Starring: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Viola Davis, Patricia Clarkson

W

elcome to the perfect world of the Whitaker family. Frank (Dennis Quaid) and Cathy (Julianne Moore) have big house and a manicured garden. They’re an American Dream couple: Successful businessman, attractive and doting wife, two charming kids. It’s the Connecticut suburbs of the 1950s. Life is easy-going; traditions and manners appeat to matter above all else.

The dream unravels when Cathy finds Frank in the arms of a man. In postwar America, homosexuality was a curable disease. All you needed was drugs and rehabilitative therapy. The desperate Whitakers turn to an “expert.” But guilt-ridden Frank, weighed down by inadequacy, drifts from the marriage. Cathy befriends widower Raymond (Dennis Haysbert), the polite and well-spoken gardener. He’s black. Racism will kill both the relationship and the Whitaker family dream.

Writer-director Todd Haynes masterfully choreographs the emotional rawness that lurks beneath a veneer of flawless appearances. Connecticut’s autumn foliage is a stunning backdrop to a sublime film.

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