Y hiI am writing this as a psychiatrist. This is the story of abuse of two women from vastly different backgrounds, one of poverty and cognitive limitations (Elmus) and a highly, educated, psychiatrist. Chenaz. They interact when the psychiatrist deals with Elmus a mute underage teen who has come to the Emergency room mute, being found locked outside her home, hypothermic from the cold, with her middle age husband and his mother both of whom are overpowering in size , dead inside.
Though the medium of psychodrama which is devastatingly played out, Elmus, playing herself talking with her mother, reveals being sent away from her sister and her family at age 13, under false documents that showed her to be 18, to be married to this man who sexually assaulted her and his mother who abused her like Cinderella, for real. In the psychodrama Elmus alternates between desperation and anger and fear and tears repeating, Why did you send me away? Can I come back and play with my sister.
Chenaz experiences her own abuse from her more educated husband who binges on pornography and uses her to satisfy his sexual desires without involvement in loving her.
Psychodrama with Elmus is enhanced because she reveals herself to be in such great pain despite being cognitively limited in was to express it verbally or to defend herself. I have witnessed many sessions of psychodrama and the depiction of it in this film is the most intense and powerful use of it that i have even experienced. It is worth seeing the film just for the psychodrama scenes. The movie leaves me with an in your face understanding of abuse in all its forms and consequences.
