'Um...I, uh... I feel kind of angry, I guess. I just...I just don't really... Really get it. You know, just...eat.'
For people who haven’t actually experienced them firsthand, eating disorders make very little sense. Why would you knowingly starve yourself? Or overeat? It’s easy for us to tell these people to ‘just eat’ or ‘stop eating so much’ but the reality of the situation is so much more complicated, and even eating disorder sufferers themselves often can’t articulate why they’re hurting themselves. In a telling scene in Marti Noxon’s feature directorial debut “To the Bone,” Ellen—played by an alarmingly frail Lily Collins—admits to her inpatient doctor William Beckham (Keanu Reeves, taking a break in between “John Wick” films) that …show more content…
Kicked out of four inpatient treatment programs, her chatty but well-meaning stepmother Susan (Carrie Preston) makes a last-ditch attempt to get the help Ellen needs by setting her up with an unconventional specialist, Dr. William Beckham. Initially reluctant to join Beckham’s inpatient program, Ellen’s mind is changed when her younger sister Kelly (Liana Liberato) urges her to ‘try’ this time. Moving into a group home, Ellen and the seven other patients engage in daily group therapy while abiding by a strict set of guidelines and points-based incentives that encourage weight gain. She forms a close relationship with the group’s sole male member, Luke (Alex Sharp), an eccentrically upbeat British ballet dancer who’s on the road to recovery with both his anorexia and knee injury. Although Ellen begins making progress, it is undone when fellow patient Megan (Leslie Bibb) suffers a sudden tragedy and past traumas involving her birth mother Judy (Lili Taylor) rear their ugly head, putting Ellen’s already fragile health in more
For people who haven’t actually experienced them firsthand, eating disorders make very little sense. Why would you knowingly starve yourself? Or overeat? It’s easy for us to tell these people to ‘just eat’ or ‘stop eating so much’ but the reality of the situation is so much more complicated, and even eating disorder sufferers themselves often can’t articulate why they’re hurting themselves. In a telling scene in Marti Noxon’s feature directorial debut “To the Bone,” Ellen—played by an alarmingly frail Lily Collins—admits to her inpatient doctor William Beckham (Keanu Reeves, taking a break in between “John Wick” films) that …show more content…
Kicked out of four inpatient treatment programs, her chatty but well-meaning stepmother Susan (Carrie Preston) makes a last-ditch attempt to get the help Ellen needs by setting her up with an unconventional specialist, Dr. William Beckham. Initially reluctant to join Beckham’s inpatient program, Ellen’s mind is changed when her younger sister Kelly (Liana Liberato) urges her to ‘try’ this time. Moving into a group home, Ellen and the seven other patients engage in daily group therapy while abiding by a strict set of guidelines and points-based incentives that encourage weight gain. She forms a close relationship with the group’s sole male member, Luke (Alex Sharp), an eccentrically upbeat British ballet dancer who’s on the road to recovery with both his anorexia and knee injury. Although Ellen begins making progress, it is undone when fellow patient Megan (Leslie Bibb) suffers a sudden tragedy and past traumas involving her birth mother Judy (Lili Taylor) rear their ugly head, putting Ellen’s already fragile health in more