Let’s get this straight right off the bat: Choke is a sick, nihilistic, sacreligious, depraved slice of cinema. That means, to me, it rocks out loud. Although this biting, dirty minded look at sex addiction, lust, bondage, and masturbation isn’t exactly suitable kiddie fare, or teen fare, its refusal to treat its lead character as, pardon the pun, a hunk of meat vapidly acting out his own fantasies actually forces you care about him far more than he’d ever care about you.
Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) is, plain and simple, a sex addict; he even attends meetings, where they have a multistep program designed to cure people of their addiction, same as for other addicitons. Meanwhile, his mom (Anjelica Huston) lays in a nursing home, showing progressive signs of dementia (she rarely recognizes him), and to finance his mother’s hospital stay, Victor runs cons. One of his cons is that he causes himself to choke in restaurants, allowing Good Samaritans to save his life; they’re so concerned for him that they often give him money later to help him, or something. Then he gives the money to the not-benevolent nuns who run the hospital where his mother is incarcerated.
Along the way, of course, Victor humps everything in sight, because he’s not just an addict, he’s an unrepentant addict. His best friend Denny (Brad William Henke, Sherrybaby), is also an addict – he’s a chronic masturbator – and is often complicit in Victor’s dealings.
Victor meets his match, physically, in a doctor (Kelly Macdonald) caring for his mother; unlike with the scores of other women, Victor somehow can’t, uh, finish the job with Dr. Marshall. Maybe he – gulp – loves her? Nah, can’t be.
But lest you think this is just about some pervert’s odyssey to self-actualization and empowerment, a real learning experience for all, it’s just plain not. Victor doesn’t learn diddly, no pun intended. (And if you recognize where a pun might have appeared there, you’re the intended audience of this movie.) His journey isn’t to find himself, or to better himself, it’s to find out a little about his past, particularly the identity of his real father, as Mom schlepped the young Victor around for years, on the run from the police for crimes unspecified (although it’s alluded that she was involved in violent protests). Now she’s completely vulnerable, but her memory’s not entirely reliable, either. But again, this ain’t no touchy-feely heartwarming tale of a mother-son bond, not at all; Victor just wants information before his ailing mom joins the choir invisible.
Rockwell is fantastic, perfect with his adorable-to-women, lost-puppy face; he’s not strapping, he’s not hot-with-two-Ts, he’s just some schmoe with apparently irresistible, endless charm. Huston is solid as his mother – both in the present and in flashbacks, where she recalls another of her famous characters, Morticia Addams – and Henke is a real hoot as Victor’s handy (another pun) pal. Adding equal parts sexiness and mystery is Macdonald as the leggy doctor who comes to love Victor, however inexplicably.
Choke is raucous and profane, but there’s oddly no gratuitous nudity or sex. Well, not gratutious from where I’m sitting, if you know what I mean. But seriously, what’s in there is relevant to the plot. How could it not be, though, when your protagonist is addicted to coitus?
***
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