Fino all'osso

I can imagine everyone that has had anorexia or knew or knows someone with it or comparable diagnosis will have a hard time watching this movie, but also will say it is true to it's theme.

This movie is hard-hitting, indeed, to the bone. I could not take my eyes off this movie, even though it is very hard to look at 'cause the look of Lily Collins and her co stars in the Strashhold are close to unbearable. But that is how it is so a story like this needed to be told. (Just like with 13 Reasons Why)

Everyone's performance is amazing and true to the characters. This needs to be seen, there are scenes that will make you bawl and probably help you being grounded more. It is also funny when it wants to be, which is not that often.

Loves this, waited for it for a year and it was worth it.

This was the perfect opportunity to clear up so many myths about eating disorders, especially anorexia. But we saw Hollywood's version of recovery and their version of Anorexia Nervosa an often fatal mental illness.

They should have addressed so many real issues but they padded it out with fluff.

I have struggled with an eating disorder since I was 15 years old. In my early twenties I didn't deal with it appropriately only to end up working for a group of wellness clinics... the biggest one for eating disorders. From here onward you can guess I had a massive anorexic/bulimic relapse (in my late 20's), and I went through my companies own in patient unit and several others... In my early 30's I finally made the leap, quit my triggering job and took a year off to heal. I did CBT (group therapy), shrink, psycho therapy, dietitian/nutritionist, etc etc. I am now I'm my mid 30's and I am FINALLY OK with myself, kinder to myself and able to accept myself as I am and enjoy food again. Why did I write this entire cathartic blurb? Because this movie is INCREDIBLY accurate and well made! Now only does it pretty much mirror my own relationship with myself and others, I really identified with the defiant and guarded girl Lily Collins portrayed! I literally broke down in tears at the mother/daughter breastfeeding scene... it made me think of my own issues with my mother and her inability to both breastfeed and connect with me. At my stage of healing I did not find it triggering, but that's not to say that those who are actively struggling with their own wellness might not benefit from watching it. All I can say is that the acting was spot on, as was the the secrecy,tortured, shameful and painful nature of eating disorders... during mine I did it all; starvation, binging, purging, cutting, overdosing, laxatives, diuretics, hiding food/puke/stool, you name it! But not anymore because, just like in this movie, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

I was certainly sceptical about this movie before watching it for the first time. Having personally suffered from anorexia, I anticipated that the new Netflix original would misrepresent what it is truly like to be entrenched in the world of your own eating disorder. I was partially fearful that with the beautiful Lily Collins playing the focal role of Ellen, that the film might romanticise the extremities of such a fatal mental illness and send the wrong kind of messages to the diverse range of Netflix account holders much like '13 reasons why' managed to do. However, having personally worked so hard towards recovery, my main concern with regards to the movie was its potential trigger factor. I was so wary of watching the film because I know how to push my own buttons; I have been on and off battling with disordered eating for long enough to know that if I am having a bad day, or experiencing something totally out of my control, one can be easily influenced to restrict, and over-exercise. I did not want myself and other past sufferers, nor any impressionable viewers, to hop on some totally dysfunctional bandwagon of anorexia's practical 'tips and tricks' into losing a vast amount of weight in a short time frame, then use it to justify some sort of deep routed emotional battle. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised. What won me over was the films focus on the sufferance of anorexia rather than how Ellen became ill or even why. The stigma that society has associated with anorexia in recent years must be abolished, thus I was pleased to not have had to sit through a an hour and 47 minutes of a pretty thin girl looking at prettier and thinner runway models etc. One of the greatest misconceptions of anorexia is that the illness stems from a persons desire to be thin – this is entirely subjective and often incorrect. Each person suffers in a different way, looks different, weighs different, and most importantly, has become ill as a result of a variety of reasons that are usually (and unknowingly) far more deep routed than a 'strive for thinness'. It is for this reason that I saw the film from an empathetic stance rather than an embittered and distasteful one. I was pleased to see that the place of Ellen's treatment housed patients suffering from an array of eating disorders such as bulimia and a binge eating disorder rather than just anorexia; an eating disorder is a mental illness, just because you may weigh more than someone else for example, does not make you as a patient any less sick than the next sufferer: you are allowed to hurt and you are allowed to connect and relate to another character in the film besides Ellen. The casting of a male patient in the home also caused me to sigh with relief: another huge misconception of eating disorders by society today is that this is merely a 'young girls' issue. I adored Luke's character and I think that any viewers who have been through similar traumas would easily warm to a lot of the characters, particularly Dr Beckham's patients. As result of this, I would rate 'To The Bone' as educational, not triggering, but nevertheless emotional (my eyes were leaking throughout the majority of the 107 minute run time). This movie was always going to be difficult for me to watch as I only stopped being treated for my eating disorder less than a year ago. During treatment and even after it I've relapsed several times and my friends and family have always been of great support, but if I had told my Mum I was going to sit down and watch one of the first films that actually focuses on the life of an anorexic girl, by myself, her alarm bells would have rung and she would immediately look for changes in my behaviour – she worries more than any Mother ever needs to as a result of the turmoil I have put her and my family through over the last three years. However, both the casting and characterisation of Ellen's dysfunctional family life, beautifully (and comically) represented the effect anorexia has on the loved ones of the patient and thus I would recommend any individual who has been or is currently affected by someone else's eating disorder to watch this film – it will allow you to empathise with characters such as Ellen's Stepmother, Mother, and half sister, but it might also teach you how to tolerate, comfort and help the individual so close to you that is unfortunately suffering from an eating disorder. Overall, given that this is the first film I have watched where the plot line is centred around the suffering, and effects of an eating disorder, Marti Noxon has touched on all I had hoped him to whilst evoking emotion and simultaneously educating a wide range of viewers.

This one's tricky.

It has beautiful shots, great acting, charming potential. It has humor. It has frightening appearances of semi-well known actors thin as paper to pull off their roles. I'm impressed with Lily Collins' acting. I'm impressed with the message that the movie is trying to pull off.

So what's the tricky part, you ask?

There is way too much hinted at that never gets resolution. Some of the house-members get nothing for story. Some of their behaviors never get explanation. Expulsions are hinted at, but never resolved.

What we have here is that tricky realm of trying to make a movie without beating the audience over the head with a message, and that's just plain hard to do. It's a tightrope walk, and should you veer too far over one side (or the other), you're going down.

This is okay if your focus is only on Ellen's story, while you stop caring about the rest of them, but... They bring them too close to Ellen and too close to the nature of what they are trying to combat to simply disregard them later on, which is where you run into trouble with "message movies".

I always think of the tightrope walk that was Norman Jewison's ...And Justice For All, starring Al Pacino. Talk about being beaten over the head with a message... and yet Jewison still managed to make at least an enjoyable story about it.

But it wasn't Rollerball. It didn't have a driving theme throughout the movie that used its message only as backdrop, while it pushed Jonathan E and his quest to find a way to keep playing the game he loved, even while everything and everyone was trying to push him out. There, the message was behind the story, and we still got it.

Here, the message drives the story, and that doesn't nearly work as well.

I will say this, that it does bring to light a lot about eating disorders and the way the world looks at eating disorders, and there certainly is a lot here that works well at trying to understand how difficult it is to heal from such a thing.

I only wish there was a better movie, behind it all.