Chained For Life
Written and Directed by Aaron Schimberg
USA | 2019 | Fiction | 91 min
Film Source: Kino Lorber
A beautiful actress struggles to connect with her disfigured co-star on the set of a European auteur’s English-language debut. Through pitch-black satire, Chained for Life examines the treatment of disability on screen and on set. The film undermines conventional ideas about what constitutes beauty and sincerity onscreen. It even hints at a loose parallel between plastic surgery, which can be seen as helping people look the way they feel inside, and filmmaking; both are mechanisms for creating illusions, but also have the potential for revealing hidden truths. Schimberg’s film is odd, darkly funny and — when it means to be — a little frightening.
Recent reviews:
Extraordinary. A cinematic revolution.
Humane and transgressive, an American indie of unusually big ideas and aesthetic ambition.
Mesmerizing. A remarkable mind trip of a movie sure to leave audiences reeling.