‘Turtles All the Way Down’ Review: A Young-Adult Romance with an Original Dramatic Obstacle: The Heroine Has OCD
05.05.2024 - 06:41
/ variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic How’s this for a swoon-worthy romantic moment? Aza (Isabela Merced), darkly beautiful and shy, find herself alone with Davis (Felix Mallard), a rich-kid dreamboat, at his family’s woodside mansion. They’re having a gentle conversation; the sparks are flying. As the music swells, you feel the time arrive for them to kiss.
At which point we hear Aza’s worried voice on the soundtrack saying, “You’ll get his bacteria in your mouth. His bacteria will make you sick.” Or as she puts it a little later to her psychiatrist (Poorna Jagannathan), “How can I have a boyfriend if I hate the idea of kissing him?” Obsessive-compulsive disorder can take many forms, and in “Turtles All the Way Down,” based on the hugely popular young-adult novel by John Green (“The Fault in Our Stars”), it takes a rather classic one: Aza spends her entire existence terrified of germs — of contamination and infection. She has a callus on the inside of her middle finger, one that’s been there for years.
Every day, she tends it, provokes it, cultivates it; when her OCD gets intense enough, she’ll prod it until it bleeds. That callus is the focal point of her anxiety. When she gives it a fresh Band-Aid, it’s like a ritual that lets her think she’s purged the poison.
At the moments when her mania is out of control, she tries to “kill the infection” by consuming hand sanitizer. Yet Aza’s disorder isn’t merely a fear of contamination. As she explains to us, it has an existential dimension.
Aza believe that because she’s just an “organism,” with a body full of microbes, all of which have the potential to contaminate her, her self isn’t really under her control. So in a way, she has no self. The demon of OCD feels like it has a
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