Macho malaise

Great performances make up for awkward
style in the darkly comic Chuck
Palahniuk adaptation Choke

by MALCOLM FRASER

Fight Club did more than just offer a brief, misleading notion that David Fincher was capable of depth (that’s right fanboy, you heard me). It also aroused a lot of curiosity around cult author Chuck Palahniuk, who seemed to capture a sort of millennial zeitgeist of unfocused male energy. This vision of battered machismo is again on display in the new Palahniuk adaptation, the dark comedy Choke.

Sam Rockwell stars as Victor, a middle-aged slacker who works at a colonial reenactment park and beds every woman who crosses his path, while valiantly attempting to break his habit at a sex addiction clinic. He also pays frequent visits to his senile mother (Angelica Huston) at a seniors’ residence, where he tries to get some clues to his father’s identity, reminisces on a childhood being brought up as a fugitive, and develops a bizarre relationship with ward doctor Paige (Kelly Macdonald).

The film’s tone, narrative development and comic timing have a stagey feel, and it’s anyone’s call whether this is a deliberate strategy on the part of screenwriter/director Clark Gregg (What Lies Beneath)—he is, after all, a disciple of Mamet—or evidence of an uneven hand.

Then there’s the undeniable fact that like David Duchovny’s Californication, Choke plays out the most base type of male fantasy—despite Rockwell’s bad hair, terrible dressing and slovenly manner, he sleeps with women constantly with no more effort than a glance.

But director Gregg is also an actor (he was in Magnolia, Mamet’s State and Main and Spartan among many other films), and accordingly, his cast is well chosen and nurtured into great performances. Rockwell and Huston live up to their credentials, and Macdonald, who you might remember from No Country for Old Men, is equally strong as the eccentric doctor.

Their performances elevate the film from what otherwise might have been a lethal combination of macho attitude and sensitive-guy whining. With its questionable sexual politics and awkward style, it’s the kind of film some will utterly hate—one of my esteemed colleagues left the press screening sputtering in disgust—but others will be won over by the compelling characters and the strangely sweet aftertaste their story leaves.

CHOKE OPENS THIS FRIDAY,
SEPT. 26

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