Willkommen bei Alice

Unconventional but warm exploration of a broken person who uses her own television program as public therapy; well written & directed, it deftly walks the line between playing mental illness for laughs & treating it with respect.

#nitrosMovieChallenge.

I was expecting a roll-on-the-floor comedy. After all, it's Kristin Wiig, and Will Ferrell as a producer.

It starts off funny enough. A woman obsessed with Oprah Winfrey feels screwed over in her past, but wins the lottery and wants to have her own talk show.

But it turns into an analysis of a "mental issue" and the diagnosis that goes along with that.

I think everyone has issues - but when you give these issues names then you marginalize & categorize people that further push people into little boxes.

By the end, I was moved to tears. This movie is so worth watching. But it's not the SNL-type skit you might be expecting.

Welcome to Me is a distinctly odd movie about a woman with a boderline personality disorder diagnosis and millions of dollars in lottery winnings who decides to have a vanity TV show all about her. It's an interesting idea, and it kept my attention, but I feel it wasn't quite the movie it might have been.

First off I'd like to talk about borderlines, because I've known a couple. Googling around I've found a few articles describing this movie as either a good or bad portrayal of BPD. Since BPD simply means you exhibit a large number of traits from a list (impulsivity, self-harm, etc.), Alice is acceptable as a borderline. And since being borderline can exist with other conditions, like depression or narcissism, you can't really complain about less typical borderline behavior.

That being said, Alice doesn't seem like borderlines I've known, and lacks some commonly known BPD qualities. For example, borderlines are often very good at feigning normalcy. I once saw a BPD friend, ranting and raving after sneaking out of a psyche ward and trying to kill herself, instantly become calm and rational when the cops came to check on her. Many psychiatrists don't like working with borderlines because they can feel tricked when that patient convinces their doctor that they're fine now right before a suicide attempt.

Alice, on the other hand, is just purely odd. And her oddness seems to come entirely from her mental illness. It is as though Kristen Wiig was so concerned with getting the symptoms right that she never thought about who Alice would be without her mental illness. But in truth, people with mental illnesses have traits that have nothing to do with being mentally ill (although some psychiatrists do try to fit everything about their patients into their diagnosis).

Because of this, Alice is an interesting character but not a really compelling one.

Meanwhile, the intriguing premise never quite gels. Is the movie a satire of celebrity and our fascination with trashy talk shows? Is it an attempt to portray mental illness? Is it an attempt to get laughs out of mental illness?

I never really felt this movie had a vision, or a point of view. Like the main character, the story feels like it's a bunch of ideas stuck together rather than a cohesive drama.

While the movie feels a little undercooked, I did enjoy it. Wiig may seem more like a mildly autistic narcissist than a borderline, and the story may feel unsubstantial, but it is amusing to watch Alice create her entirely peculiar show and get into weird dietary fixations. The movie may not make a coherent whole, but the pieces are pretty good in themselves.

Fools and their money are soon parted from one another. Nowhere does this saying hold true more than with lottery winners. Alice Klieg, diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, emerges from a solitary and sedentary life as the new winner of $86 million from the state lottery. She begins to buy airtime at a local television station that is desperate for cash. Alice's new talk show "Welcome to Me" is a perfect reflection of her impulsive, socially awkward, indecisive, random, obsessive, moody and sensitive self. It features some of her favorite recopies (meatloaf cake), traumatic events from her past (the "carousel of life"), and – of course – swans (she loves swans). Her insistence upon absolute control and predilection to get out of control, make for some interesting and eccentric shows that are alternately extremely boring and explosive. The dry and dark humor of the film fits the acting abilities of Kristen Wiig perfectly. The film is funny as well as raw. I wish there was more depth to the plot, however, for it relies too much on the wacky shows. Seen at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

Welcome to Me stars Kristen Wiig as Alice, a woman who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). When she won a lottery that grants her a sizable amount of money, she produces, acts, and stars in a TV series entitled: Welcome to Me.

First and foremost, this is the most endearing thing Kristen Wiig has done, outside her usual comedy movies. The way she portrays Alice is so heartbreaking and detailed, sometimes funny, but also feels authentic. The supporting cast did a good job too, especially Linda Cardellini.

However, this movie is definitely not for everyone. As the title and the premise suggests, this movie is going to be all about Alice and her world. Alice's actions are questionable and maybe some audience can't digest that properly.

If you're interested in movies about psychology issues, then this is definitely a movie for you. Otherwise if you want to feel good, you might want to pick up something else, as the constant melancholy and confusion this movie brought will disillusion you, forcing you into saying "What the hell was that?" when the credits roll.