REVIEW: Choke (18)

Chuck Palahniuk returns!!! The film version of his novel Fight Club is widely regarded by many as the best film of last decade, and Palahniuk himself regarded as a kind of poet laureate for the emotionally disaffected. It’s been a long wait, but nine years after that seminal work comes the adaptation of his 2001 novel Choke.   

Choke is the story of Victor (Sam Rockwell), a sex addict whose life is in several ruts. He is tied to a dead-end job in a colonial theme park, and his mother (Anjelica Huston) is the latter stages of dementia and thinks he is one of several dead lawyers she once knew. To supplement his meagre income he pretends to choke in restaurants, receiving cheques from those who eventually save him (and subsequently feel responsibility for his life). As his mother’s life begins to ebb away, we learn why Victor is the way he is, and Victor himself gets a chance at a new life through a mysterious new doctor at his mother’s hospital (Kelly MacDonald).

Choke suffers from similarities to Palahniuk’s ‘other’ story. Like Fight Club, an unusual disorder is explored, our quirky anti-hero establishes a hugely dysfunctional relationship with a woman, and not everything is as it may seem. To say this is Fight Club with added sex, however, is to undersell it somewhat. Yes, debutant director Clark Gregg throws in a hell of a lot of nookie (as befits a film about a sex addict), but underneath is actually a rather moving story about Victor’s immensely scarred relationship with his mother, and the all-encompassing impact it has on his adult life. A weak point has to be the gratuitous nature of those many sex scenes, as well as certain meandering plotlines (in particular one linking Victor to Jesus).

Rockwell got his first lead part in George Clooney’s superb Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, but since has carved a niche as the scene-stealing supporting actor (Hitchhiker’s Guide..., Matchstick Men, and the forthcoming Frost/Nixon), so it’s refreshing to see such an underrated actor showcased here. He’s very much a Palahniuk male lead- lost, insular and to some extents selfish- but Rockwell’s pained performance makes you root for him no matter how bad it gets (and it gets really bad). Huston is brilliant as the paranoid, strung-out mother from hell, whilst MacDonald is bizarrely sweet as the doctor with well intentioned but strange methods.

Choke won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, however once you gets past the bodily functions it really is a quite insightful look into society’s abandonment of those suffering with mental disorders, and how nurture can often do far more damage than nature in what makes us what we are. Like Fight Club (we’ll stop mentioning that now, honest) there’s a happy ending, even if it is not happy in the traditional sense. A little unfocused, but nonetheless intricate, incredibly funny, and surprisingly warm.