Although certain themes recur across his body of work, Todd Haynes’s mercurial choices have ensured that his films elude easy categorisation. He has created a suitably gnomic biopic of Bob Dylan (I’m Not There, 2007), shown an unfamiliar side of Patricia Highsmith (Carol, 2015), and created a fascinating homage to Douglas Sirk (Far From Heaven, 2002). Safe, voted the best film of the 1990s by The Village Voice, stars Julianne Moore, who rose to prominence in this decade, as a housewife whose sterile life is upended when her body begins to react increasingly negatively to the environment of modern life. 

Notes by Kevin Coyne.

Screening as part of the American Independents season.