MOVIE REVIEW : HAUNTING ‘PORTRAITS OF ANOREXIA’

As the six women and one young man of “Portraits of Anorexia” (a one-week addition to regular programming at Los Feliz) explain their encounters with this insidious eating disorder, film maker Wendy Zheutlin moves from the healthy young face on the screen to photographs taken during the peak of his or her illness.

They are cadaverous, almost like X-rays of the person speaking. And while the camera scans their faces today, pink-cheeked, blooming, they describe their rationale while they were anorexic: One had “to earn” the food she’d just eaten, by vigorous exercise; another liked the feeling of taking up less room, “you’re almost an invisible person”; the third doesn’t believe she deserves food, love or companionship (although almost all are now recovered, this young woman is still anorexic after five years).

After several family histories, it becomes easy to spot the candidate for anorexia: the good, quiet, overachiever; the perfect daughter, who took over mothering her two brothers, shopped and cooked for them; the boy whose family “didn’t take things seriously” enough for his grave demands. Their quest for perfection is never-ending. Finally, their bodies became the one battleground where they can maintain complete control.

These are taut, well-edited, heart-wrenching interviews, two of them with the mothers of young (recovered) anorexics, including a 12-year-old girl, anorexic at the age of 10. It becomes clear that family dynamics are very much involved in all these examples; we hear about perfectionistic, demanding parents, “devoted to their kids the way you’d be devoted to a project,” in the bitter words of one ex-anorexic daughter.

Well-made, informative, myth-destroying (this is not the disease of the affluent, nor only--although largely--of women), “Portraits of Anorexia” at 51 minutes is still an odd choice for a theatrical release. You might think its ideal niche would be television, but for anyone even mildly concerned with the problem, these histories and faces may haunt you.

‘PORTRAITS OF ANOREXIA’ A Churchill Films release of a Fat Chance Films Production. Producer, director, editor Wendy Zheutlin. Original music Mark Isham. Narrator Paula Poundstone. Camera Chris Beaver. Sound Judy Irving. Associate producer Teresa Bergman. Narration written by Margaret Barnett-Burnette. Assistant editor Mark Page. Editorial consultant Robert Epstein.

Times-rated: Family

Running time: 51 minutes.