The slow action of the movie surely gave me time to reflect on my opinion on it.
During the movie I found it a cringeworthy but at times disturbing set of cliches about anorexia and cult sects. This is all set against a backdrop of generally overprivileged but emotionally deprived families. Or so the story goes. That bit I found underdeveloped.
I recognised some of the eating disorder behaviours, I have seen them from up close. I also recently watched the Netflix series on the cult leader's playbooks; the movie recites almost verbatim from more than one page of those books.
In the intersection of those you see delusional behaviour under the influence of social pressure. That is discomforting. As a parent the most heart wrenching feeling was the total loss of contact with the child, with dramatic consequences. Again, few subtleties there, so I did not feel much connection to the emotional development. The one exception might be the situation of the principal upon whom it is to decide when to move from signals to action. But she is powerlessly let off the hook.
At times I felt thrown back into the 70s with the slow action, the camera zoom shots, costume and set design. Writing the review I feel that may have been intentional.
There is satire, occasionally, for example when a parent seated on a balcony deck chair in a scene from a series on the most luxurious homes in the world, proclaims he wants children to learn how to consume less.
These examples show how the movie gave me too much time to think about how it was trying to make a point to me, instead of taking me for a ride.
During the movie I found it a cringeworthy but at times disturbing set of cliches about anorexia and cult sects. This is all set against a backdrop of generally overprivileged but emotionally deprived families. Or so the story goes. That bit I found underdeveloped.
I recognised some of the eating disorder behaviours, I have seen them from up close. I also recently watched the Netflix series on the cult leader's playbooks; the movie recites almost verbatim from more than one page of those books.
In the intersection of those you see delusional behaviour under the influence of social pressure. That is discomforting. As a parent the most heart wrenching feeling was the total loss of contact with the child, with dramatic consequences. Again, few subtleties there, so I did not feel much connection to the emotional development. The one exception might be the situation of the principal upon whom it is to decide when to move from signals to action. But she is powerlessly let off the hook.
At times I felt thrown back into the 70s with the slow action, the camera zoom shots, costume and set design. Writing the review I feel that may have been intentional.
There is satire, occasionally, for example when a parent seated on a balcony deck chair in a scene from a series on the most luxurious homes in the world, proclaims he wants children to learn how to consume less.
These examples show how the movie gave me too much time to think about how it was trying to make a point to me, instead of taking me for a ride.