Pretty lawns and plenty of angst in 'The Safety of Objects'

By Chris Vognar
The Dallas Morning News

•	THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS Starring Glenn Close, Dermot Mulroney, Patricia Clarkson, Moira Kelly, Timothy Olyphant, Mary Kay Place, Jessica Campbell and Robert Klein. Directed by Rose Troche. Rated R (language, sexuality, nudity, adult themes). At Landmark's Inwood Theatre. 120 min.

You can trace the roots of the CESEK back to Grand Canyon, and you can find an urban variation in "13 Conversations About One Thing."

In any case, you probably know the ground rules. Multiple characters and/or families, searching for Meaning in the sanitized suburbs. They're hounded by contemporary angst and spiritual ennui (oh, the spiritual ennui). Happiness is elusive. Troubled adolescents are usually part of the mix, and their parents just don't know how to handle them. They're usually decent people, but various forms of crises have forced them to re-evaluate life. And they're all interconnected, because, you know, we're all interconnected.

If you've gone to the movies in the past few years, you have probably encountered a CESEK. Examples include "The Ice Storm," "Magnolia," "American Beauty," "Life as a House," "Happiness" (extra-dark division) and "Everything Put Together." Some of these films are quite good, which does not preclude their CESEK eligibility. This is a matter of kind, not quality.

But "The Safety of Objects" shows just how hard it can be to hold a CESEK together. The CESEK requires us to track and give two hoots for a gallery of eccentrics all at once; it is a genre for multitask viewers. And when too many of the eccentrics strain the limits of credulity, or when they become Metaphors that merely further the film's heady themes, the CESEK can buckle under the pressure.

And so "The Safety of Objects" gives us a boy (Alex House) in love with his sister's toy doll, a housewife (Glenn Close) who seeks Meaning and the approval of her daughter (Jessica Campbell) through a Hands on Hard Body type endurance test, and a disgruntled lawyer (Dermot Mulroney, sans mullet) who seeks Meaning through the housewife. There's a teen in a coma (Joshua Jackson), an older woman (Patricia Clarkson) who once fooled around with the teen in a coma, and a gardener (Timothy Olyphant) who likes to hang out with kids. We are the suburbs. Despite our pretty lawns, we have problems like everyone else.

This kind of stuff was somewhat fresh when John Cheever and John Updike took it on in previous eras. It still packs a punch in most films by P.T. Anderson and Todd Solondz. But as the CESEKs pile up, they start to feel like appendages of the same film. You can almost see the sweat stains as "The Safety of Objects" strains for cosmic significance. To paraphrase Annie Hall, it aims to achieve extreme heavyosity. But that kind of weight comes from not trying too hard, and "Safety" always seems to be trying.

So remember: Happiness is a Magnolia Ice Storm of American Beauty.

And please don't feed the ennui.