Far From Heaven is a strange, stylized movie that mixes a certain retro look with contemporary themes. Set in the '50s, the film tells the story of a perfect family leading the perfect life, Eisenhower-era style, until reality rears its ugly head.

Julianne Moore plays a middle-class housewife, and Dennis Quaid plays her husband. They have two lovely children. Dad is a successful TV sales executive. Everything is just as it should be, well -- provided you are white, straight, middle-class and capable of breathing in that repressive culture. When issues of race and sex can no longer be glossed over, things change.

Far From Heaven is a domestic melodrama cut from the same cloth as the films of Douglas Sirk and John Stahl, all lush and pretty stuff laid over tragedy, and usually with Barbara Stanwyck or Gene Tierney or Jane Wyman swanning around in great dresses.

In an homage sort of way, Far From Heaven is a bit surreal in the visual department. Everything here is exaggerated in its beauty, particularly the clothing worn by women in the cast. As well, the characters are very still, and their line delivery will remind you of old-Hollywood acting. It's all very stylized. Initially, it's fairly weird, because it has become so unfamiliar in the current cinema world of big explosions and hard-boiled dialogue. Eventually, however, the film grows on you. And how.

The filmmaker, Todd Haynes, sets up an appealing backdrop into which he gently drops huge, dark issues. As the central character in the film, Julianne Moore is a housewife whose whole life gets blown up -- she separates from her husband, she becomes a social pariah over an interracial friendship, her children are shunned. The gap between what she thinks and feels and how much society will permit gets ever wider.

On the performance front, let's just say the Oscar whispering has already begun. Moore is flawless.

Given the false nostalgia that exists now for the 1950s, there is an air of great sadness available in Far From Heaven. The film was shown here in September during the Toronto film festival, and viewer response was fascinating -- some loved the movie, some hated it. Several U.S. film critics were very angry with Todd Haynes for what they perceived as his dredging up of the "problems of the past" in their country.

Of the past? Haynes has hit the emotional bull's-eye with this one.

(This film is rated PG)

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