PASSION OF MIND

US, 2000, 105 minutes, Colour.
Demi Moore, William Fichtner, Stellan Skarsgard, Sinead Cusack, Joss Ackland, Peter Riegert.
Directed by Alain Berliner.

Passion of Mind is a romantic film – with strong psychological themes.

The film is a star vehicle for Demi Moore. She portrays two women – or, rather, one woman who lives two lives. On the one hand she is a woman with two children, a widow in France, seeing a psychiatrist. On the other hand, she is a businesswoman in New York City, who is seeing an accountant as well as a psychiatrist. She falls in love in both worlds. Each of the psychiatrists is aware of her life in the other world – and she also reveals this to each of the men.

The thesis of the film is that she is living one life and dreaming another. However, she does not know which is which. And, for a long time in the film, the audience is not certain. However, gradually it emerges that she has created the French world, that it is the memory of her past, her children are in mirror images of herself, her psychiatrist is really her mother, the man she falls in love with, her father. In New York, she is much more businesslike, but comes to life in her relationship with the accountant.

The two men are played by William Fichtner in New York and Stellan Skarsgard in France. Peter Riegert is the New York psychiatrist, Sinead Cusack the French psychiatrist who eventually is revealed as the presence of her mother.

Those who want realism in their films may find this film irritating or bewildering. However, those with a romantic cast of mind may enjoy it, with good performances by Demi Moore, and the psychological explanations.

It was co-written by Ronald Bass, prolific American author of such films as Rainman, The Joy Luck Club. It was directed by the Belgian Alain Berliner who had made the sensitive film about the cross-dressing little boy, Ma Vie en Rose.

1. The title, the explanation? Marie and Marti? And the psychological condition?

2. The Belgian director, his perspective, the French setting, the American settings? The beauty of the French countryside? The businesslike atmosphere of New York City?

3. The film as a star vehicle for Demi Moore? The other casting?

4. Did the psychological condition have any plausibility? Too vivid in real lives? The different names? Relationships, work, the men, the children, the psychiatrists? Each life real and presented as real?

5. The audience response to each world? Which world did the audience think was real? Which the dream? Did the screenplay supply sufficient clues?

6. Marie in France, the widow, her two children, her writing the stories, storing them? The psychiatrist, talking with her, chatting about the beauty of the spring and summer, her life, meeting William, the bad review of his book, his continued writing, courting her, their discussions, the relationship, the affair, the effect? The role of the daughters?

7. New York, Marty as the business type, her room, the bust, at work, money issues and the agency, the meeting with Aaron and the talks, his being entirely different in his approach to life and work? Inviting her to Central Park? Thirty minutes? The bond between the two, falling in love, the outings, the bath sequence, sharing? The therapist in New York, his scepticism, the rules of psychotherapy?

8. The fact that Marie and Marty told the people in each world about the other? The effect on the therapists? On William, on Aaron? Jealousy? Puzzlement? Concern?

9. William and Aaron as characters, gentle, pleasant, communicating? The comment of each on the other?

10. Marie’s stories, her daughters revealing them, giving them to William, precipitating the crisis?

11. William disappearing? Her mother disappearing? Father and mother figures?

12. Marty’s past in France, the two children being embodiments of her at different ages, realising that her therapist was her mother, discussing things with her?

13. The mother, her talk, help, always being present?

14. The psychological aspects of the children being facets of herself, her mother, the father figure? Their disappearing and the resolution?

15. The United States being the real world, Aaron being the true love, her return to normal life?