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Mansfield
The Treatment
USA, 2006
[Oren Rudavsky]
Chris Eigeman, Ian Holm, Famke Janssen, Roger Rees, Stephen Lang
Comedy / Drama
Shot on location in New York on a shoe-string budget ($600,000) and starring Ian Holm and Famke Janssen, The Treatment promises much. Based on the 1998 novel by Daniel Menaker, the film revolves around Jake Singer, an English teacher at a private school in New York, his difficulties forming lasting relationships, and his therapy sessions with Holm�s Argentine Freudian analyst Doctor Ernesto Morales. He meets Allegra Marshall (Janssen), and the two subsequently embark on a relationship.

It�s not a bad film, being well crafted for its budget (being shot on Super 16 helped financially, but detracts aesthetically), and I find it hard to discern exactly what it is I don�t like about it without straying into subjectivity. Nevertheless, I found the characters to be two dimensional, their motivations obscure and inexplicable, and the narrative too aimless and detached. A side-plot with one of Jake�s pupils, the troubled black youngster Walter is clich�d and goes absolutely nowhere. Jake�s therapist is supposed to be a domineering presence in his life, though Holm�s performance is little more than a string of comically mispronounced words. Having sat through the BBC�s 1980s sitcom
Allo' Allo! on several occasions, I can confirm that intentionally mangled dialogue really is the lowest from of wit.

I can�t recall a single scene where any of the three main characters smiled at all, and with the disappearance of Walter, Jake�s job is reduced to babysitting the children of wealthy businessmen. This, combined with his burgeoning relationship with opulent widow Allegra, removes him from the realm of everyman, and as such the audience�s heart, leaving the brain the primary organ in charge of evaluating the film. And my brain was preoccupied wondering if there was any significance in the fact Jake Singer is also the name of the protagonist of Jacob�s Ladder another film about a New Yorker battling with his own mental demons. Apparently there isn�t, but I don�t think the fact I spend a good deal of this film thinking about another film entirely is a good sign.

There�s a scene early on where Jake (the little known Chris Eigeman) lectures his class on the merits of Chekhov and how it is important for the reader to engage and empathise with characters for us to truly appreciate and enjoy literature. The teaching scenes were an invention of screenwriter Daniel Saul Housman, and don�t occur in the original novel. Bearing the sentiments of these sections in mind, it�s doubly frustrating that I didn�t empathise with any of the characters, and ultimately wasn�t engaged at all by the film.
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