SPANKING THE MONKEY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Jeremy Davies, Alberta Watson, Benjamin Hendrickson, Carla Gallo. Screenplay/Director: David O. Russell.
SPANKING THE MONKEY is as difficult to watch as any film this year. Let me clarify that--that is not because it is terrible. On the contrary, SPANKING THE MONKEY is one of the best films of 1994 to date. But it is not a pleasant experience. It's a blacker- than-pitch comedy about a particularly dysfunctional family, one in which we are witnesses to the implosion of the main character's psyche. What makes it impossible to look away is a pair of stunning lead performances in a story as horifically comic as anything concocted by David Lynch.
Jeremy Davies stars as Raymond Aibelli, a young man looking forward to a prestigious medical fellowship in Washington following the completion of his freshman year at M.I.T. However, there is a detour along the road to Washington. His mother (Alberta Watson) has suffered a compound fracture in her leg, and his father (Benjamin Hendrickson) is heading off on a long business trip. This leaves an extremely reluctant Raymond as the only one available to care for his mother. It's not an easy task. Mrs. Aibelli is demanding and depressive, and takes more than a passing interest in Raymond's sex life. The tensions between them build, and the result forces Raymond to drastic action.
At the center of SPANKING THE MONKEY is the convoluted relationship between Raymond and his mother, established in intricate detail by writer/director David O. Russell. We learn that Mrs. Aibelli gave up her own dreams of a medical career in a bargain with her husband, a bargain which allowed Raymond to be born at all. With her husband on the road almost constantly, her entire identity has been connected to Raymond, and with the empty nest has come a profound and complicated depression. Alberta Watson navigates this character with astonishing grace, making her simultaneously pathetic and sympathetic, a still-beautiful woman facing a mid-life crisis which she can only seem to resolve in destructive ways. It is only because Watson allows us to see Mrs. Aibelli's deep pain that actions which instinctively cause the audience to cringe also seem to make a kind of twisted sense. To use the comparison which has frequently been made between SPANKING THE MONKEY and THE GRADUATE, this is Mrs. Robinson the way she should have been played.
Jeremy Davies' performance as Raymond is more restrained, but just as poignant. There is a lack of back story written in to Russell's script, but Davies fills in all the blanks with a reading that tells us that while what we see are extremes, this kind of dysfunction is nothing new to this family. From the moment his father tells him that he is going to have to stay with his mother, it is clear that the internship is not the main reason he is resistant; there is nowhere he would less like to be than home. Davies carries himself in a state of perpetual tension, a tension which is denied simpler release at every opportunity, and finally boils over with results that prompt very nervous laughter. Davies and Watson deliver two of the best performances of the year, and give the unpleasant subject matter a surprising appeal.
It does at times seem that Russell has expended all his energy on the complexities of Raymond and his mother. Mr. Aibelli is something of a cartoon figure of a traveling salesman, bombastic and philandering, but a scene in the woods with Raymond cuts through much of the stereotype. Raymond's psychobabbling girlfriend Toni (Carla Gallo) is nicely underplayed, but is too much of a prop; the same is true of Raymond's busybody aunt. However there are so many piercingly insightful moments that these sketchy characters are easier to tolerate. One extremely effective scene shows Raymond hanging out with some old high school acquaintances, guys he clearly didn't like then and likes even less now. It's a scene comic in its painful familiarity, and one more of the many things Russell does right to highlight how trapped Raymond feels. SPANKING THE MONKEY deals with difficult subjects in a brutally honest manner, and will have an inherently limited audience, but it so daring and well-acted that it is worth risking the unpleasant taste it may leave in your mouth.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 spanked monkeys: 9.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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