Characters on the Couch
Film & Television Blog
by Dr. Sandra Cohen
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS
The Signs of Separation Trauma?
This Film Tells Us A Lot
Tim Wardle’s documentary, Three Identical Strangers, is a timely and disturbing account of the trauma of early separation. As a psychoanalyst who specializes in separation trauma, I left the theater shaken and troubled. Children aren’t for using. They aren’t for self-serving studies, proving points, or punishing parents (yes, Trump and your cronies, that’s you.) The…
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,…
