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Empathy

2003, Movie, NR, 92 mins

Empathy: Review

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You needn't have spent any time on either side of the couch to appreciate filmmaker Amie Siegel's entertainingly complex deconstruction of the analyst/patient paradigm that lies at the heart of the “talking cure.” Blending documentary with fiction, Siegel explores the relationship between therapists and the people who pay them to listen to — and hopefully help solve — their problems by intertwining interviews with real-life analysts with the fictional story of Lia Graf (Gigi Buffington), a voice-over actress who's in therapy to help her deal with feelings of inadequacy and failure. But as the film progresses, Siegel continually reframes this basic structure until the original conceit becomes nestled within several layers of narrative reality like the tiny figure at the heart of a Matrioshka doll. We see the (presumably fictional) screen-tests of several actresses, including the one playing Lia, as well as a fluffy celebrity interview with a actress-turned-director named Jennifer Scott James (also played by Buffington), who reveals that in her latest project she plays a depressed woman (Lia?). When Lia gets a job narrating a film about the interelationship between psychoanalysis and modern architecture — an actual piece of documentary filmmaking embedded in the larger film that includes interviews with such real-life talking heads as UCLA Art and Architecture Department chair Sylvia Lavin — the film becomes a fascinating exploration that culminates in a provocative discussion of Charles and Ray Eames's lounger as the analyst's chair of choice, and its place in silver screen iconography. The meta-film also addresses such heady issues as surveillance, clinical voyeurism and spectatorship; performance and posture; and therapy as an emotional and a financial transaction. But it's at the nexus between psychoanalysis and filmmaking that this Chinese puzzle-box of a film makes its most satisfying connections. Early on, Siegel asks her analysts if they ever lie to their clients and, conversely, if their clients lie to them. All admit to some degree of performance on both sides — it's really just a matter of how close that performance is to the true self — and it's that core relationship between actor and spectator/director/analyst that we see repeated throughout on a variety of levels, both fictional and otherwise. But true to the subject of this often fascinating film, that's but one thread into Siegel's labyrinth — a psychological funhouse that's always a pleasure to explore. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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