FAR FROM HEAVEN

A picture-perfect fifties housewife is devastated when she discovers that her husband prefers the company of men.

CAST: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson, Viola Davis, James Rebhorn, Celia Weston

DIRECTOR: Todd Haynes

"It suggests that the 50's facade of normalcy concealed both incendiary passions and a ruthless social machinery devoted to their suppression...'Far From Heaven' is both a movie about the 50's and a tribute to some of the great movies of the 50's...It rediscovers the aching, desiring humanity in a genre--and a period--too often subjected to easy parody or ironic appropriation. In a word, it's divine." -- A.O. Scott, The New York Times

"It's so intimate, accessible, and passionate that it makes every other current movie seem anemic. It makes even Sirk seem anemic...an imitation that surpasses the original on just about every level. It's hard to think of a movie so postmodern and infused with irony and at the same time so sincere and emotionally accessible." -- David Edelstein, Slate

'''Far From Heaven'' is a dazzling conceptual feat, but more than that, it's a work of enthralling drama ...Who could have guessed that our cornball Hollywood past, newly reassembled with nearly all of its restrictions intact, would turn out to be a more expressive landscape than virtually anything in the let-it-all-hang-out, we-will-rock-you pop culture of today? Haynes hasn't just embraced old Hollywood. He has brought its soul back to life, showing us a path to what Hollywood could still be." --Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"Haynes is deconstructing those Rock Hudson-Jane Wyman-Lana Turner weepies while also paying homage to their seriousness...It's a form of intellectual vanity, I think, to ascribe great artistic value to whatever mists our eyes; it's a ploy that allows us to keep our dignity in the process of losing it...'Far From Heaven' ultimately achieves the same sentimentality as the Sirk films, and in much the same way: It elevates female sacrifice into an aesthetic. The movie isn't about suffering, really. It's about how you look when you suffer, how you dress up for it. Style is all." --Peter Rainer, New York

"Haynes and his players maintain a delicate balance and never slip into camp or parody. We take these tormented, intensely vulnerable people seriously, and we don't stop worrying about them. We have reason to worry, because we know that Todd Haynes' ending will be far from heaven and much bleaker than anything Douglas Sirk was ever allowed to show." --Guy Flatley, Moviecrazed

"...what Moore does with her role is so beyond the parameters of what we call great acting that it nearly defies categorization. Although it's the least naturalistic of the performances because the character is an artificial construction, yet another imitation of life, it's also the most devastating...Moore breaks our hearts...Haynes knows that the impossible world he's created will inspire giggles, but he's savvy enough to have orchestrated the precise moment in 'Far From Heaven' when the laughter stops dead. He's an independent filmmaker who loves Hollywood, and with this feature he's grasped that no matter how righteous a film's politics, there's no more powerful way to seduce an audience than to sweep it away in a flood of tears." --Manohla Dargis, The Los Angeles Times

"Style, substance and originality, too? In 2002? Pass me the smelling salts. But you get all that--and more--in 'Far From Heaven,' the ravishing new film by writer-director Todd Haynes...the tradition of heartbreak glazed with glamour leaks through every luxurious frame...he constructs a revisionist arc beyond the perimeters of 50's melodrama to reveal the dark shadows lurking behind those perfect organdy curtains...This is not a parody of period melodramas. Mr. Haynes' revelations about how little the basic fears of sexual orientation, racism, prejudice and divorce have changed in 50 years are valid, relevant and timeless." -- Rex Reed, The New York Observer