DVD Review: Oren Rudavsky’s The Treament

PopMatters recently ran my review of Oren Rudavsky’s brilliant 2006 movie (out on DVD in late 2007), The Treatment.  If you have any tolerance whatever for romantic comedies, then you will probably find something to like here.  If you find crazy analysts funny, then you are in for a rare treat, as Ian Holm is a maniacal one–though, as my review explains, The Treatment is actually quite canny about the cinematic function of this mania:

 An analysis can take years; Rudavsky has 86 minutes.  How, then, to represent the outsized place an analyst holds in his analysand’s psyche?  By transforming him into a monstrous presence, one who trangresses all manner of boundaries and takes up permanent residence over the patient’s shoulder.  This is a highly effective strategy, at once witty and psychologically acute.  It even keeps the movie from veering into sheer sentimentality, as Holm pops up at the most inopportune moments.

Read the whole thing!  (And rent the movie!  Encourage smart, watchable movies about psychoanalysis! or about love!)

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