The Safety of Objects

The Safety of Objects follows four neighbouring households in an American suburb whose lives are knotted together by grief, frustration and private crisis. Esther Gold has narrowed her world to caring for her son Paul, who lies in a coma, at the cost of her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train pours himself into his job rather than his family. Helen Christianson looks for something to break the routine of her marriage, while Annette Jennings deals with divorce and the strain of raising two children on her own. Their stories meet.

Rose Troche directed and wrote the screenplay, adapting A.M. Homes's short story collection; it was her first feature after her earlier film, and she would not direct another until My Fake Boyfriend two decades later. Glenn Close leads a large ensemble as Esther, with Dermot Mulroney, Patricia Clarkson, Jessica Campbell, Joshua Jackson and Moira Kelly among the credited cast of forty-one.

Released in October 2002, the drama runs 121 minutes and was made as a British and American co-production. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.5 from around 4,500 votes, and on TMDB it stands at 6.5 from a much smaller number of votes. Film critics gave it 6.2 from seventy-four reviews, placing their average close to what general audiences recorded on both sites.