
From maverick author Chuck Palahniuk
(Fight Club) and breakout new writer-director Clark Gregg
comes the subversively comedic tale of Victor Mancini, con
artist, sex addict, Colonial village re-enactor,
angst-filled son, serial restaurant choker . . . and
unsuspecting romantic antihero for our unsettling times.
Victor (Sam Rockwell), in an effort to pay for his once
radical, now demented mother’s (Academy Award® winner
Anjelica Huston) expensive care in a private hospital,
engages in a brazen scam. While dining in upscale
restaurants, he deliberately chokes on his food, allowing
himself to be “saved” by good Samaritans who grow so close
to him in the wake of their heroic Heimlich Maneuvers, they
lavish him with checks. His day job is no more conventional:
he portrays an indentured Irish servant in full 18th Century
garb at a historical theme park. And when he isn’t busy
being a put upon Pilgrim, gagging violently or visiting the
mother who doesn’t recognize him, Victor is attending
sexaholic recovery meetings (or having forbidden encounters
in the meeting hall bathroom.)
It’s no wonder Victor feels adrift. But when his declining
mother hints that she might be ready to spill the secret
identity of his long lost father, Victor hopes it can
finally provide the answers he has been searching for. With
the help of his fellow sex addict Denny (Brad William
Henke), Victor befriends his mother’s alluring young
physician (Golden Globe® nominee Kelly Macdonald), who leads
him to believe his origins may be far more shockingly divine
than he ever could have imagined. So is Victor Mancini still
the no-good loser he has always thought he would be for the
rest of his life or could he possibly be . . . some crazy
kind of savior?
CHOKE, which ran away with the Special July Prize for Best
Work by an Ensemble Cast at this year’s Sundance Film
Festival, is not only a cathartic and romantic satire about
uncontrolled lust, lost faith, childhood trauma, mad
addictions, bizarre fantasies and blockages both emotionally
and literally, but also about second chances, redemptive
moments and true love – that is, it’s about modern life.
© Fox Searchlight Pictures. All
rights reserved
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