The Treatment (2007)

Too much of everything

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The first must-see film of the year.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I grabbed this off the shelf without much thought but was generally pleased with it as a selection. It is the story of a single Manhattan high school teacher who is in psychotherapy. The film makes good use of fantasy by startling us with imaginary interventions by his extraordinarily aggressive and ribald therapist at dramatic junctures during his day. While the leading character, Jake, has experienced a romantic disappointment in an earlier relationship, the main thrust of his therapy seems directed at a battle against mediocrity. Apparently, acareer as a high school teacher does not count as success. Apparently also, the elderly therapist considers a year without sex a major red flag. Apart from these shortcomings, Jake seems to conduct himself cautiously but extremely well, leaving me wondering about the correctness of his mediocrity.This film does a good job of representing older people, for example the therapist and Jake's father, as well as others, as something else besides useless. Here they are accepted enough to assert themselves, their intelligence is respected and occasionally heeded.The plot held my attention through its twists and turns. Two points I felt were a lapse into hackneyed stereotypes involved the feminism of his lover, Allegra. To begin with, she initiates the first sex (even though things seemed to be proceeding along nicely) and routinely assumes the aggressive role after that as well. I questioned whether this would really be cool in real life. I suppose this could be taken as the otherwise lacking evidence of his neurosis by accepting it except that it is all her actions.Secondly, after they have had frequent and mutually gratifying sex, get along great, he well on his way to being accepted by her two children, and to cap it all off she is about to lose custody of her young daughter because the adoption stipulated a two-parent household-- with all this in play she rejects his heartfelt proposal of marriage because she is 'not ready' just a year after becoming a widow. These two facts might suggest that she, a rich woman, was using him as a convenience. However, the rest of her character as portrayed does not support that at all. Instead the flick is merely waving a PC flag of liberated woman-- even when it is absurd-- to garner brownie points. Ultimately however, all such complexity of living is suddenly swept away in a traditional happily-ever-after romantic ending--but one so hasty that I definitely felt they were running out of film. I don't want to sound like I would entirely re-engineer the film, but I definitely felt it was going somewhere else. But these are lapses in authenticity in a film notable for authenticity. It is an engaging and often quite funny flick.

THE TREATMENT (2007) *** Chris Eigeman, Famke Janssen, Ian Holm, Stephanie March, Stephan Lang, Blair Brown, Harris Yulin, Roger Rees. (Dir: Oren Rudavsky)Analyze This!: Literate rom-dramedy with stand out work by Eigeman & Janssen.Jake Singer (Eigeman), a New York City prep school literature instructor, is in a state of flux. After a bad break-up (is there any other kind?) he runs into his ex, Julia (March of NBC's "Law & Order SVU") and opens his fresh wounds to the fact she has moved on and gotten engaged. Awkwardly he accepts her invite to an engagement dinner. This adds fuel to his fire with his visit to his passive/aggressive Argentina émigré analyst Dr. Morales (Holm), whose demeanor suggests his patient is only to blame for all his shortcomings.While Jake stews with his domestic dilemma he's busy juggling an extracurricular activity as the school basketball team's statistician who has been attempting to mentor one of the temperamental players, a good kid who is struggling with his skills and the brow- beating by their jerk coach (Lang), who tells Jake to butt out of his methods. On top of that he is jockeying for a summer sabbatical to London for the school by making good with the headmaster (Rees) at a get-together dinner held at a trustees' widow's home.The recent widow, Allegra Marshall (the gorgeous Janssen, best known as Jane Grey from the "X-MEN" film franchise, in one of her best performances to date), is also in a state of flux dealing with her grief at the loss of her husband, the victim of a sudden heart attack, leaving her to care for their young, impressionable son and a toddler they were in line for adopting (she has failed to report his death to the agency negotiating the legalities).Jake is smitten with the hostess – at first unknowing she is a widow – and begins to take interest in her and her family. Before he knows it he is hooking up with her and when she makes her confession he is at first shocked – and then relieved – since all his flirting has paid off. Naturally he is scolded by Morales.The couple gingerly eke out their newfound relationship but soon find an awkward bump when the adoption agent (Blair) makes an unexpected visit to see the welfare of the progress of the bonding between the child and the impeding parents-to-be. Based on a novel by Daniel Menaker, Daniel Saul Housman's screenplay is literate and charming but problematic only when it uses the narrative device of the therapist to act as a surrogate conscience to Jake, popping in here and there as an unseen noodge. Rudavsky, a documentary filmmaker making his first foray as a feature film director, stumbles a little bit in some flatfooted staging, but is acquitted by the fine acting by his leads.Eigeman, best known for his brainy, WASPy turns in Wilt Stillman and Noah Baumbach films (and if they ever did a live-action adaptation of the ARCHIE comics would be a top choice as Reggie!) , comes across as a latter- day Charles Grodin, a sardonic scold whose witty banter and cosmopolitan airs belie his insecurities, does a fine job imbuing the uncertainties and neuroses of his character that has shades of a Woody Allen manqué, but he also has some good nuanced choices in his phrasings and facial expressions underscoring the dialogue given.Janssen proves to be a fine counterpoint, a glammed-down statuesque gal out of his league, but not entirely unlikely soul mate. She is an underused and underrated actress; this proves she can do so much with so little.An indie sleeper that should be sought out for those who like their rom-dramedies with wit and sex appeal.

Each to his own, but I'm really surprised at the review above.I also saw this in Edinburgh (it's where I live, and incidentally the Edinburgh Film Festival was the best ever this year for me).The film I saw was cute, funny and unpredictable. There are some lovely unexpected moments. Without giving too much away... it's a relief to see a script dispense with the old "lie piled upon lie" cliché and instead have characters who decide to live up to their responsibilities. If you thought you would never get to see a New York intellectuals film in which grown-ups behave like grown-ups for once - well, here's your chance.There are also some great lines. It's impossible not to smile at Ian Holm's vaguely monomaniacal therapist intoning, in his Argentinian accent, "once you start driving ass-backward through life, it can be very hard to stop. And you realise too late that the major decisions in your life are lying in the road like so many crushed squirrels." This is possibly my favourite therapist quote since Ingrid Bergman was told in Spellbound to have "sweet dreams - and tomorrow we will analyse them over breakfast." Ian Holm makes the part work perfectly because he doesn't overdo it.You end up feeling affection for both the therapist and his client, even though they are at odds. This is one of the film's best qualities. Secondary characters get a chance to develop, so for instance the father is not just an old tartar and the mother-in-law not just a disapproving snoop. What's most evident in this film is the writer's sympathy for almost every character, so that whether or not they are redeemed, you find yourself seeing their point of view, if just in momentary flashes. I loved this.Meanwhile, Famke Janssen gets a rare chance to act, and lives up to it.The sweet thing about this film is that it isn't slavishly Woody Allen, or pointedly anti-Woody Allen either. It plays as if Woody Allen never existed. This means that there are no weary inevitabilities. Anything might happen (and frequently doesn't, because something else intriguing happens instead).It doesn't all work, but I've only got minor gripes. Overall, it could have done with being just a little longer, to make some of the secondary relationships more convincing. But erring on the side of keeping it short was probably the smarter mistake to make.If you get a chance to see this, go. Decide for yourself which review gets it right.

The Treatment describes itself as 'a serious romantic comedy about life and love in NYC.' The main characters are Jake Singer, an anxious young schoolteacher who has broken up with his girlfriend and seems resigned to a life of mediocrity; his shrink, Dr Ernesto Morales (Ian Holm), who describes himself as the last great Freudian - 'in a line stretching from Moses to Aristotle;' and Allegra Marshall, a beautiful young socialite that takes a fancy to him.The film aims at a serious note with the unrelenting, intrusive and almost sadistic treatment meted out by Dr Morales. Jake's baggage is all too obvious and (although there must be easier routes) the 'treatment' does show signs of working, even when Jake starts wondering if he has maybe just 'hallucinated' the encounters. A sub-plot about adoption tries to bring in some emotional ballast to fill the chasm left by Jake and Allegra's lack of on-screen chemistry.The Treatment meanders along like an episode of Sex and the City or Frasier - only where nothing much happens. At first captivating, the endless litany of inconsequential detail and forced humour soon begins to wear. "I thought he was supposed to make you feel more comfortable in your own skin," says Allegra about Jake's analyst. "No, he's more the exfoliating type." In discussing one of Jake's favourite books, Allegra quotes a comment about the author re-drawing the landscape to place equal emphasis on what's not said. Sadly, this film has too much that is said; and that which is not said has too little substance to justify the barely relevant meanderings of school sports halls or Dr Morales' questions about sexual positions. Ian Holm delivers a fine performance, but the script, while not completely without merit, has too little to for such a great actor to get his teeth into. We are told that the lover in Jake is under-nourished and the self-pitying side over-fed: much the same could be said of this bloated, drawn-out and not particularly engaging film.