A 1950s Soap Opera Look and Sound Made in 2002, when "Forbidden Love" Could Be Shown

I don't understand why Dennis Quaid received so much positive attention (even some awards) for his turn in the 2002 movie "Far from Heaven," a soap opera written and directed by Todd Haynes (whose "Poison" is among the worst movies I've ever seen, and about whose movie "Safe" I was very dubious).

Quaid's straying husband at the center of the movie set in Hartford, Connecticut in the autumn of 1957, barely registered with me. As usual, Julianne Moore deserved the praise she received, as did Dennis Haysbert -- though critical favorite Patricia Clarkson was a disappointment. Quaid's restraint perhaps should be praised in contrast to the kind of "Watch me act! I'm acting!" mugging that won William Hurt an Oscar in "The Kiss of the Spider Woman" or that of Richard Burton and Rex Harrison in "Staircase." Quaid's character, Mark, is anguished and overwhelmed (not a drag queen like Hurt's Molina).

For all its supersaturated colors (cinematography by Edward Lachman, True Stories, Virgin Suicides) and throwback musical score by Elmer Bernstein's (his last feature film-length score), "Far from Heaven" struck me as an imitation of an imitation of "Imitation of Life" and "All That Heaven Allows" (more the latter than the former, with race replacing class; racial differences were central to "Imitation of Life" though on different dimensions. Haynes was following Fassbinder in providing an homage to Douglas Sirk's 1950s melodramas made for Universal, but Fassbinder had his own agenda, so that none of his movies is only recycled Sirk, as I think "Far from Heaven" is.

Homosexuality, and even more so interracial homosexuality could not be shown -- except passing on the road to suicide -- in US movies made during the 1950s, but there is nothing remotely new or interesting about the Quaid-Haysbert amour in "Far from Heaven." And didn't Rock Hudson already supply a gay unsuitable "love object" in Sirk's movies. OK, it was being working class that made him unsuitable (in her children's and friends' view) for Jane Wyman in "All That Heaven Allows," the Sirk movie title alluded to in the Haynes title and Rock was not gay onscreen, but...

I prefer Showtime's deliriously funny "Weeds" for suburban shenanigans and ironic gotchas! And for Dennis Quaid acting, I prefer that on display in "Frequency" and in "The Big Easy" (or, reaching, way back, his performance in "Breaking Away"). And for stylization, why not the Universal Studio soap operas of Herr Sirk himself? (with a closeted gay man as the tall, dark, handsome unsuitable lover).

Moore's acting, Haynes's writing, Bernstein's music, and Lachman's cinematography all received Oscar nominations, btw.

---

This is another of my June AC reviews of representations of the obstacles to gay pride here and there, now and then.