Characters on the Couch
Film & Television Blog
by Dr. Sandra Cohen
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
Trauma Driven Obsession
It’s Not Healing
Emerald Fennell’s brilliantly disturbing and evocative film, Promising Young Woman, shows us one troubling aftermath of trauma. And, it’s all because no one helped. Cassie lost her very best friend (and only true soulmate) to suicide. Why? Because Nina couldn’t go on after a violent and repeated gang rape that seriously traumatized her. And, no…
SOUND OF METAL
How Silence Stops A Man From Running
Ruben has been on the run for a long time. No one becomes a heroin addict unless there’s something too painful inside for him to stop, for even a moment, to hear (or feel). So, Ruben runs – with drugs, frantic hard metal drumming, and in his desperate love for his singer-girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke).…
THE FATHER
Fighting To Hold Onto Who He Was
The brilliance, and terror, of Florian Zeller’s The Father, is that we’re living inside the mind of an aging man losing his identity to Dementia. To watch it from the outside is bad enough. I know. I was that daughter too. But to be the one losing his grip on who he was is truly…
