Posted by Jost on November 21, 2006, at 21:54:20
In reply to Poet's Comments- Trigger, posted by Poet on November 19, 2006, at 18:00:15
I saw the film tonight, and my first reaction is that I found it rather baffling.
I felt disconnected from the women and the subject, as if it were one of almost incomprehensible strangeness. It was a bit like an anthropological film, showing a tribe whose rituals and beliefs one couldn't penetrate or capture fully. I had almost no sense of being inside the experience-- or that anyone who worked at Renfrew's was empathically connected to the women. (I'm assuming they were, and it didn't come across to me.) I had to wonder, also at times, as the review points out, because many of the staff were quite overweight-- yet sat there stonefaced as the women talked about how unbearable it would be to be "fat." Or when women were forced to leave because their insurance ran out-- there was no reaction. Everything was treated as utterly banal. That type of stony non-response might be therapeutic, in their view, but it was hard to understand how that sort of mask would be.
Even though EDs are enigmatic or hard to treat, that didn't seem the point. Perhaps it was, I don't know.
One of the therapists said, perhaps somewhat portentously, that one patient felt that she had experienced things that were "unspeakable." This was the only moment when the film seemed to acknowledge that there was any problem, particularly, any emotional or spiritual problem, to be addressed. Yet even that felt somehow flat.
More often, it suggested that there were rules to be followed, or unappetizing meals to be forced down, strictures to followed or avoided.
So how the treatment at Renfrew was thought to help--or what the inner world of the women was--almost was not even in question. You just watched; they just went through motions.
It's true, there was a sort of austere angst pervading the film.
But I felt more estranged than disturbing-- everything was made ordinary or overly abstracted. (There were two short disturbing scenes that I personally didn't watch-- but , although that made it a bit more wrenching, it doesn't fundamentally change what I think.)
Jost
poster:Jost
thread:697831
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/eating/20060628/msgs/706025.html