There are many laughs in this quirky comedy, but at its heart is a poignant story about loss and the failure of connections to stick in our rudderless lives.
By Bob Brown
SEX addiction hadn’t gotten much ink until David Duchovny checked himself into a recovery program a couple of weeks ago. Ironically, Duchovny plays the sex-obsessed character Hank Moody on the TV series Californication. Now here’s a film whose main characters are in either a sex-addiction program or a mental health facility. It’s hard to tell who’s unhealthier.
The script, by director Clark Gregg, is based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, whose fiction is also behind the powerful film Fight Club (1999). Like that story, Choke takes place in a world at least one step removed from reality. For Victor (Sam Rockwell), every level of every day is a performance.
While recovering from sex addiction (although half-heartedly), he works as a historical re-enactor at an 18th-century settlement (which looks an awful lot like Waterloo Village in Stanhope). His co-worker and co-addiction recoverer Denny (Brad William Henke) plays a guy who is perennially locked up in the village stocks. Were this really the 18th century, Benny might well be there. An insatiable urge to self-gratify dominates his waking hours — 15 times a day minimum. So he considers the stocks a sort of forced withdrawal program, since he can’t get his hands anywhere below his neck.
But Victor has two other roles. First, he plays the lawyer of his mother, Ida (Angelica Huston), whose dementia has confined her to a facility where Victor visits dutifully, hoping she’ll recognize who he really is some day. To cover her expenses, Victor supplements his income by choking himself in restaurants. Gasping, he stumbles toward the richest-looking person in the room, who will save his life and, thus bonded, will send him money.
As Ida fades further with each visit, Victor fears if she doesn’t eat she’ll be sent to the second, or third, floor, two steps closer to the grave. Fortunately, he meets the cool Dr. Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald). After rebuffing his initial advances (she’s the only woman in the place he hasn’t yet seduced), Marshall takes sympathy on his mother’s plight and offers Victor a special deal. But it requires him to perform under, shall we way, wilting conditions.
Flashbacks revisit the vagabond childhood of young Victor (Jonah Bobo), one step ahead of the police under Ida’s whimsical wanderings. He has only a vague idea who his father is, but he suspects it’s not, as Ida claims, an itinerant Norwegian shopkeeper with Tourette’s Syndrome. We understand customer relations are thus difficult.
Meanwhile, Victor and Denny are both skating on thin ice at the village. The 21st century keeps breaking through their facade, much to the chagrin of the Lord High Charlie (Gregg), who threatens them in period parlance. One of the running gags is how period-strict Charlie is, even out of public sight. When he suspects Benny has a skin mag, Charlie says, “Handest over thy gazette.” Victor and Benny claim ignorance of what he’s talking about, since such publications hadn’t existed in the 1700s.
And this only scratches the surface of a plot that meanders down every byway possible, given the unusual combinations. To get by, Victor has had to role-play, virtually choking out his true self and numbing his emptiness through meaningless sex. His capacity for love has been stunted, just as his performance is when he confronts what may be the real thing. There are many laughs in this quirky comedy, which bears a family resemblance to the work of Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums). But at its heart is a poignant story about loss and the failure of connections to stick in our rudderless lives.
Huston, an Anderson veteran (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), is peerless as the confused and dazed Ida. We’ve already seen how effective a comic Gregg is as Richard Campbell in The New Adventures of Old Christine. And Rockwell, a standout in The Assassination of Jesse James, is terrifically funny here, as is Henke, who does a wacky (no pun intended) but sweet guy. Macdonald, a minor player in No Country for Old Men, manages to give her bizarre character great emotional depth within a comic envelope. She pulls off one of the film’s eyebrow-raising surprises.
Right from the opening credits, Nathan Larson’s off-the-wall score sets the tone for the entire film. He’s comfortable with the oddball, having scored Todd Solondz’s unique Palindromes. This little film with no little pleasures was shot on a shoestring in three weeks by veteran indie photographer Tim Orr (Pineapple Express).
Given its frank subject matter, this is not a movie for the small kids. Nor will it enlighten anyone about sex-detoxification in a helpful way. On the other hand, it is one of the few comedies that finds its humor way out in left field and brings it on home. Don’t be surprised if it also puts a lump in your throat.
Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity and language.

