Far From Heaven
I don’t know how they do it now, but a few years back when DVDs first came out and the distributors eventually succumbed to sending preview-DVDs to video stores instead of preview VHS tapes, they immediately applied a few different measures to try and curb piracy. One was having annoying "promotional information" about the film flash up constantly on screen. I could stand that for about a minute. Another was to have the picture turn black & white at ten minute intervals for one minute duration, then flick back to colour. The preview disc of Far From Heaven I recently found in storage suffers from that treatment, but the funny thing is, when it flicked into black & white it seemed perfectly appropriate. You see Far From Heaven is set in the 1950s, here rendered beautifully picturesque if not a little clichéd: a world where Beaver and his Clever clan might just live down the street. Yet Heaven aims to peel away the TV-sitcom sheen of idyllic suburban family life of this era and examine relationships weighted with closet homosexuality, adultery, inter-racial friendships – all obviously taboo topics for the ultra-conservative time.
Julianne Moore turns in a nicely measured performance as a housewife whose world is rocked by the revelation of her husband’s gay affairs, and who in turn rocks the world of her neighbours when she starts up a friendship with her black gardener (although it’s a little off-putting that she took on two 50s housewife roles in the same year: this and the sublimely dull The Hours.) She’s supported ably by 24’s Dennis Haysbert as her white husband…only kidding…as the gardener, and Dennis Quaid is also surprisingly good as her conflicted husband. I don’t know why but I always expect him to completely suck and am then pleasantly surprised when he doesn’t.
It is with great skill that Far From Heaven manages to avoid being a done-to-death camp parody of the perfect American 50s family, nor is it a biting satire of the times. It’s just a story set in the 50s, one that veers occasionally into melodrama but in truth was a lot simpler and tamer than I thought it would be, making it a pleasant surprise all-round.