Choke

Go and see this one. Victor is a sex addict. He goes to a support group and gets all the support that he needs – sex, and he gets it everywhere. Mercifully this is a movie where people’s rude bits are not on display, and the cameras stay focused above the waist, but the spectators are left in doubt about what the characters are doing with those rude bits – not a movie for those of a nervous disposition.

However Victor has a softer side, and in time we learn that he has given up college to earn money to pay his mad mother’s nursing home fees. The relationship between the two is strange but touching, and we learn that the personality problems Victor suffers find their roots in his upbringing.

The title focuses on a behaviour Victor has perfected to divert attention when tricky situations arise. When things get tight he can make himself choke, gaining sympathy and help from strangers who then seem to feel responsible for him, even sending him money which he uses to pay his mother’s health bills. Again this ploy goes back to childhood and he has adapted it well to suit his needs.

Part of the mystery is the identity of Victor’s father, an identity his mother kept secret in her times of relative sanity, but now with the onset of full-blown madness and the prospect of her imminent death the race is on to get the information from her. This race has some hilarious twists and turns, with poor Victor ending up convinced that he is a direct descendant of Je…. okay, I won’t give it away, but it really is quite outrageous!

This is typical Chuck Pulahniuk stuff – not surprising since he wrote it. Sam Rockwell plays Victor, and he lives up to his surname with vigour. Along the way we wonder who is mad and who is sane, and it gets us extending that question to all around us ….. is my doctor, lawyer, friend, mother really what they say they are or are they just acting out a fantasy?

Mad and funny this movie may be, but it also opens the lid on why we are the way we are.

Some other excellent movies to be seen:

The Popes Toilet

Banishment-Izgnanie

Gommorah

Paris-The-Film