Poison (1991)
Directed by Todd Haynes
A trio of interweaved transgressive tales, telling a bizarre stories of suburban patricide and a miraculous flight from justice, a mad sex experiment which unleashes a disfiguring plague, and the obsessive sexual relationship between two prison inmates.
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What critics compared Poison to
The camp sensibility, however, is fully self-aware, not unlike certain Todd Haynes' movies: the Barbie-doll biopic "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," or the black-and-white venereal horror/sci-fi segment of "Poison."
But it is director Todd Haynes, oozing the confidence that defined 2002’s Far From Heaven , who is the real magician here, combining the subversive clout of his 1991 Jean Genet-inspired Poison with the flawlessly empathetic character study of 1995’s Safe and the swooning period detail of 1998’s Velvet Goldmine .
It has been exciting to watch Haynes mature as a filmmaker, starting with his super 8 film "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" and progressing through films like "Poison," "Safe," and "Far From Heaven."
Right from Todd Haynes’ highly original 1991 feature, Poison , it was apparent that this was a natural director with a great feel for cinematic language.
And it is Haynes—without the extravagant shape-shifting masquerades of Velvet Goldmine and Poison —coming out as well.
With wider community acceptance of queer issues, Haynes knows audiences are less interested in the radical queer films of his past – such excellent works as Poison (1992) or Velvet Goldmine (1998) – rather, just like what legendary provocateur and fabulously queer Pink Flamingos director John Waters stated in ArtForum , “Maybe the only way to be transgressive these days is to be shockingly tasteful.”
The interplay between the various modes that he flips between in “May December” may not be as dynamic as those in “Poison” or as striking as those in “Wonderstruck,” but Haynes has never swerved between them to such amusing effect, or made the conversation between them quite so legible in the process.
The experimental bonfires of Poison (1991), Safe (1995), and I’m Not There (2007) were easily scanned this way, while Far from Heaven (2002) and Carol (2015) were convincing enough narratively to be taken at face value, their questioning of melodramatic mechanisms secreted within true-hearted histrionics.
Whereas "Superstar," "Poison" and "Dottie Gets Spanked" lapse into moments of macabre surrealism…
The story is set in 1987, and many presumed it was a commentary on AIDS, though Haynes dismissed that reading — he’d been there, done that in his earlier Poison.
Haynes--the brilliant, young, gay director whose 1990 "Poison" was a critical and art-house hit--is transferring another plague's fear and chaos to a conventional, solidly middle class, protected world.
His next was an odd gay triptych called "Poison," which was a big hit on the festival circuit, possibly for one of its scenes, filched from the works of poet Jean Genet, that pushed the barriers of the watchable.
He irritated me with his feature debut, "Poison," an art-house flower so swollen with metaphorical pollen it could give a department of English professors a bad case of the sniffles.
Haynes' earlier films include a life of Karen Carpenter featuring animated Bardie Dolls and the stylistically splintered Poison.