Characters on the Couch
Film & Television Blog
by Dr. Sandra Cohen
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
I Will Find Myself In You
Will I Feel Everything?
Desire is what director, Luca Guadagnino, hoped to convey in Call Me By Your Name – the kind of desire that allows you to live life by following your feelings with openness. Guadagnino calls this: “living with a sense of joie de vivre”, in which, he says: “we should always be very earnest with [our]…
PHANTOM THREAD
What’s It Really About? Reynolds & Alma’s Perverse Feeding Game?
Paul Thomas Anderson has done it again. He’s a master at exploring the various kinds of perverse power games involved in problems with dependency and love. Anderson’s new film, Phantom Thread, is another brilliant character study to add to Boogie Nights, Magnolia, The Master, and Inherent Vice (to name a notable few). In Phantom Thread,…
LADY BIRD
Mothers & Daughters
How History Plays Its Part
In Problems Loving and Letting Go
and Lady Bird begins with a Joan Didion quote splashed across the screen: “Anyone who talks about California hedonism has never spent Christmas in Sacramento.” Christmas is mostly for children or, at least, the child part of us. And, few come through childhood unscathed. Greta Gerwig’s charming, brilliantly written, funny, and psychologically real film has…
