Safe

Now, having watched Mon Oncle twice and Safe once, I begin to see the two movies in relation to each other, especially in the comparison of Carol White to Mme. Arpel, the houses which they occupy, and the two worlds portrayed by the movies that attempt to exist simultaneously.

In the role of the housewife, Carol and Mme. Arpel are both bound by societally-imposed and self-imposed expectations, relating largely to gender and class.

Both characters try to create a veneer of perfection to present to the world.

Mme. Arpel is constantly cleaning her home, the car, her husband, her child, and, well, anything she can get her hands on. Without fail, she turns on and off the fish fountain to demonstrate their wealth and status - ensuring the fountain is on before the guest arrives and only turned off after he or she leaves gives the impression that they can afford to enjoy the fountain all the time. At the beginning of Mon Oncle, everything in Mme. Arpel's uber-modern home has a place to which it belongs, down to the pebbles making up the well-manicured "lawn." She is the only one who can deftly manage the many gadgets of the kitchen, quick to show off her skills to any guest. Of course, like a good housewife, she is apologetic and gracious upon being "interrupted," though arguably, it is also part of her duty to be constantly ready to present herself and her home.

Carol has also fashioned a suitable mask of "the housewife" to wear. At the beginning of the film, Carol is engrossed in the interior design of her house--it is her only interest. she maintains her body through aerobics classes--not because she enjoys them necessarily, but more because she should. Her lack of commitment to the exercise, I think, is shown by the fact that Carol does not sweat. She does not give up any part of herself to the activity, remaining instead a kind of inert presence. She may move but she doesn't leave a trace of herself behind. Oddly, Carol's friends admire this--an unnatural trait--which suggests the kind of woman who is valued in this postmodern society: the woman who can control absolutely every aspect of her life, as unrealistic as that may be. Carol submits rather indifferently to her "wifely duties"--I say indifferently because, as Professor Burke mentioned in class, I perceived blankness from Carol during the sex scene. She was not resentful. She was merely on auto-pilot. Unlike Mme. Arpel, however, Carol's mask soon begins to crack, as she is faced with unexpected event after unexpected event. While Mme. Arpel handles the surprises with the sort of bumbling about allowed in her character, Carol does not have that luxury. Though the mistress of the house, Carol is child-like and does not handle change well. A misplaced phone book, the wrong colour couch and she loses her balance.

I wonder about the idea that Mme. Arpel and Carol differ in that Mme. Arpel, despite the intrusion of her clumsy brother-in-law and his disruptions to her home, continues to value and be satisfied with the house, while Carol, discombobulated by the disarray of men at work, begins to experience an intense dissatisfaction with her home--to be exaggerated even more when the teal couch finally arrives yet does not seem to fill the void.

Her intense dissatisfaction with her environment then results in her falling apart. I think this is a result of the fact that Carol's identity depends largely on her relationship to the space that surrounds her, which is suggested by the way the scenes are filmed--leaving large amounts of space around the main characters. This also works to suggest that the characters, Carol specifically, are not enough in themselves to fulfil the expectations of others, of society, of the house, of themselves. For the few moments the camera zooms in on Carol's face, such as the moment before she wakes up, we finally get a sense that Carol may be a person and not just a gear in a machine. Or the moment when Carol zones out during the crude joke, only to apologize for living in her own world when she is brought back to the conversation. Another moment, though it's not a close-up of her face, is the ephemeral walk through the garden. But then she wakes up and the camera pans back out and we lose Carol. Then the spotlight shines over her and for a moment we wonder if something wonderful will happen, but the camera pans out and she looks like a deer caught in headlights--a thief caught with stolen moments. She loses herself in the gaze of others.

What initially drew me to compare Mon Oncle with Safe was the noise that filled both households. While the buildings and spaces themselves differ greatly, the noise of both prevent the occupants from communicating. In Safe, we hear a vacuum cleaner, the phone ringing, voices on the telephone, music, alarms, and Spanish voices talking. The noise is nearly incessant, and when one day, Carol comes home to a still and quiet house, the silence is disturbing and foreboding.

Finally unable to tolerate the living space any longer, Carol escapes to Wrenwood. Wrenwood is supposed to be an oasis, but it is accessible by car and is constantly interrupted with sounds from the real world--most prominently, planes flying overhead. Not only that, Wrenwood is alarmingly close to the highway, and Carol only realizes later that the oasis is actually only superficially so. Though the clients no longer face the causes of the fumes that plague them, they still experience the fumes drifting from the highway.

In other words, despite the proffered quiet and natural experience, Wrenwood actually offers the opposite. The two worlds that are supposed to exist simultaneously in peace, Wrenwood and the outside world, do not. The outside world constantly infringes on Wrenwood, just as the uber-modern suburbia and quaint village of Mon Oncle infringe upon each other.