Full disclosure: I have Tourette Syndrome. While Tunney is a good actress, I find a great deal of fault with this film, especially the writing and directing. The portrayal of TS is deeply inaccurate to the point of being harmful. I have known and counseled dozens of people with Tourettes and related disorders, and I have never seen the "violent outbursts" portrayed in the film. Tourettes is not psychosis. It is not criminality. It does not "male" you beat people or grab for a gun. It is a tic disorder that is sensationalized as much as it is misunderstood. Tunney's character is desperately seeking antipsychotics to control her tics. Because of advances in SSRI, SNRI, and benzodiazepine medications, antipsychotics have not been used regularly in the treatment of TS for many years. The fact that there is no deeper explanation for her behavior beyond her "attacks" conflates disability with moral failure.
This attempt at a serious portrayal is in no way authentic. One of the few saving graces of this film, though, is it is so implausible in its representation that TS is reduced to a plot device. Ask yourself, if this were a film in which race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or even another disability were portrayed in such a way, would you find it offensive? I do for obvious reasons, not the least of which being that the filmmakers are exploited a neurological disorder, thereby portraying those who struggle with it as criminals and fringe personalities. Unfortunately, there are very few honest, thorough portrayals of Tourette Syndrome in television or film, so there isn't much to compare it to. But I see the damage this film has caused the few people with Tourettes who are familiar with it. If the writers and director had done a minimal amount of research, this interpretation of Tourettes would not have been much different, or the screenplay would have ended up in the trash with the exploitation films of earlier decades.
Seth's fumbling attempt to explain Marcie's disorder to the police in the toy store is the final nail in the coffin for me. His bumbling, half-hearted attempt to save his partner results in a film that fails even to be a decent love story, while the glaringly offensive inaccuracies about Tourettes eliminate the emotional impact of an otherwise tragic storyline. This film is an object lesson in how misinterpretation and shallow research into disability can do real harm.
This attempt at a serious portrayal is in no way authentic. One of the few saving graces of this film, though, is it is so implausible in its representation that TS is reduced to a plot device. Ask yourself, if this were a film in which race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or even another disability were portrayed in such a way, would you find it offensive? I do for obvious reasons, not the least of which being that the filmmakers are exploited a neurological disorder, thereby portraying those who struggle with it as criminals and fringe personalities. Unfortunately, there are very few honest, thorough portrayals of Tourette Syndrome in television or film, so there isn't much to compare it to. But I see the damage this film has caused the few people with Tourettes who are familiar with it. If the writers and director had done a minimal amount of research, this interpretation of Tourettes would not have been much different, or the screenplay would have ended up in the trash with the exploitation films of earlier decades.
Seth's fumbling attempt to explain Marcie's disorder to the police in the toy store is the final nail in the coffin for me. His bumbling, half-hearted attempt to save his partner results in a film that fails even to be a decent love story, while the glaringly offensive inaccuracies about Tourettes eliminate the emotional impact of an otherwise tragic storyline. This film is an object lesson in how misinterpretation and shallow research into disability can do real harm.
Tell Your Friends