Streaming now: ‘Safe’

(Note: Until movie theaters re-open, both our weekly reviews will be films available on streaming services.)

Todd Haynes’ 1995 breakthrough “Safe” centers on Julianne Moore’s remarkable performance as a prototypical Haynesian heroine, both a spiritual precursor to Moore’s role in “Far from Heaven” and a descendant of the mutilated Barbie Doll in “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.”

Moore plays suburban homemaker Carol White, and there’s a decided emphasis on the white part. Her friends are all white, her husband Greg (Xander Berkeley) is white, and her stepson is white and submitting a school paper about how black and Chicano gangs are threatening the sanctity of San Fernando Valley. Carol’s blankness is relentless - Haynes refuses to provide much backstory - we know that she is a quiet Texan and that she wanders her garden all night like the possessed woman in “I Walked with a Zombie.”

When a mysterious malady befalls Carol, we learn her world is also a masculine one - each doctor she sees is a man who tells her there’s nothing wrong with her (though it seems likely she has the environmental illness Multiple Chemical Sensitivity).

Haynes’ focus on Carol is so intense you can almost hear the crazy-making Santa Ana winds blowing through her head - the atmosphere puts you in the mind of Joan Didion’s writing about Los Angeles as a sprawl of strip malls, fad diets and quack fundamentalists bleating on the radio.

Carol’s drive to escape the city fumes leads her to the desert, where she meets Peter (Peter Friedman) at a facility called Wrenville. He preaches “going clear”-note the resonance with Scientology-by repeating mantras like “We are safe and all is well in our world.” He proudly states that he’s stopped reading the paper and watching the news.

“Safe” is about spaces and Haynes is among the most gifted directors ever at using interior design to reveal interior lives. This is no small compliment - elements of décor in all his films are as indelible. The wide emptiness of Carol’s well-appointed family room leeches the soul just as much an endless vista of LA freeways.

The film takes place in 1987 but Carol’s fragile, desperate search for well-being resonates in this moment - she moves swiftly from a trying a fruitarian diet to confining herself in total isolation box. “Safe” gives the overall sense that there’s no longer quite enough oxygen for everyone, and a panic attack is only a few breaths away.