Film: Silver Linings Playbook

This film has touched a nerve with audiences and critics alike, winning Oscar eight nominations this years, and the Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar for Jennifer Lawrence.

Writer-director David O Russell has a son who is bipolar and was interested in the novel by Matthew Quick on which he based this film. It is very American. The characters are very extroverted in whatever situations they find themselves in. Whether the character is experiencing depression or just living ordinarily, uproar is not all that far away.

Bradley Cooper gives a powerful and convincing performance as Pat, a Philadelphia teacher who has just spent eight months in a psychiatric institution in Baltimore after getting in to a ballistic rage on discovering his wife is having an affair with another teacher.

His long-suffering mother agrees to bring him home early as long as he continues therapy sessions with Dr Patel. His first few days are pretty rocky. He refuses to take his medication and obsesses about seeing his wife and mending his marriage - even though he has a restraining order to keep away from her.

There are some hilarious and exhausting scenes on his first few nights home. Pat reads Hemmingway's A Farewell to Arms all night, in order to understand the syllabus his wife is teaching and then at four in the morning bursts into his parents' bedroom to tell them of his shock and disappointment at the way the story ends. He also has manic episodes searching for his wedding video and going into blind panic when he hears a tune which was played at his wedding.

Dolores, his mother (Jackie Weaver in a performance that got her an Oscar nomination) is kind and practical. Pat senior, his father, (Robert de Niro at his best with an Oscar-nominated performance), who has some quite bizarre obsessive habits himself, decides that his son is a lucky key to his betting plans and winning money to establish a restaurant.

The other central character is a young policeman's widow, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) herself on medication with a very disturbed past, who cautiously becomes Pat's friend. She lives in a small house at the back of her parents' property.

It's interesting that both these adult characters living with mental illness have moved back in with their parents. Without family support neither would probably have been able to survive so well. Both also wear crosses and while religion isn't mentioned, there is an underlying message of hope and faith, in this film.

The authorities in this film - the police officer, and psychiatrist are portrayed sympathetically. Dr Patel always urges Pat to 'have a strategy' for dealing with life - and the one he works out for himself is the idea of 'silver linings'.

When Pat first meets Tiffany it is no foregone conclusion that they will end up with each other and there is real tension in the story as she persuades him to enter a dance competition with him - in exchange for delivering a letter to his wife.

Despite the differences, their bluntness and lack of social skills, Pat and Tiffany do get to the dance floor - and their (moderate) success is a key for silver linings for the whole family.

A funny, compassionate film, with a fine script and beautiful performances.

See a trailer here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbgHxx1j4rc