Take My Eyes

Drama about an abusive husband and a wife trying alternately to escape and fix the situation largely gets it right but is not without its problematics. I found some of this oversimplified and anti-male: the group therapy sessions among a dozen or so men with anger problems, for example. They just sit around trading stupid male grunts about dumb bitches and what a good slap can do to set them straight, until a former member speaks up about his reformation and suddenly they’re quiet, eyes glazed over, enlightened. It’s a typical narrative cinema shortcut I suppose but here has the effect of making men look not only like brutes but thoroughgoing Neanderthals. And it probably goes to the point of giving offense in illustrating a particularly Spanish machismo, which could have been avoided by having even one decent Spanish guy in the film. It’s useful to suggest the protagonist’s father was also somewhat abusive, showing the mother’s more traditional acceptance of the situation and the daughter’s near repetition of history, but must her sister look to Scotland to find a guy worth marrying? So I’m bothered by this broad characterization, but other case study details ring true: the cycle of violence, the hope he’ll change, and the ending that thankfully doesn’t side-step the usual reality of the situation, despite any amount of therapy. Overall a good, involving film with strong performances, but too much in Bollaín’s position left a bad taste in my mouth.